Weak decays of singly heavy baryons: the $1/2\to3/2$ case

TL;DR

This paper investigates the weak decays of singly heavy baryons, focusing on the $ ext{Omega}_Q$ baryons, using a light-front approach to calculate form factors and predict decay behaviors, aiding experimental efforts.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of $ ext{Omega}_Q$ weak decays considering the orthogonality constraints, using the light-front approach to extract form factors for semileptonic and nonleptonic decays.

Findings

Form factors for $ ext{Omega}_Q$ decays are calculated.

Predictions for semileptonic and nonleptonic decay rates are provided.

Results are compared with existing literature to validate the approach.

Abstract

This work is devoted to investigating the $1/2\to3/2$ weak decays of singly heavy baryons. Due to the orthogonality between the spin wavefunctions of antitriplet baryons and spin-3/2 baryons, the weak decay amplitude for such processes vanishes at the leading order of QCD. Consequently, this study exclusively examines the weak decays of $\Omega_{Q}$. Using the light-front approach under the three-quark picture, we first extract the relevant form factors, and then apply them to investigate corresponding semileptonic and nonleptonic decays. Finally, we compare our phenomenological predictions with existing results in the literature. Our findings are expected to be helpful in experimentally establishing these decay channels.