CKM Physics from B Decays using the CLEO Experiment

TL;DR

This paper presents experimental studies of B-meson decays to determine CKM parameters, test quantum chromodynamics, and explore implications for the CKM unitarity triangle, using data from the CLEO detector.

Contribution

It provides new measurements of CKM matrix elements, decay branching fractions, and insights into quark mixing and CP violation using CLEO data.

Findings

Measured |Vub| with improved precision.

Reconstructed B -> rho l nu decay and its branching fraction.

Set bounds on CKM unitarity triangle angle gamma.

Abstract

We report on studies of three types of B-meson decay that can contribute to an understanding of fundamental intergenerational quark mixing, charge-conjugation--parity violation, and long-distance quantum chromodynamics. Specifically, we discuss a selection of analyses related to the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) parameters Vcb, Vub, alpha, and gamma, and the nonperturbative heavy quark effective theory quantities lambda_1 and lambda_bar. We first describe an examination of the first and second moments of the hadronic-recoil mass and charged-lepton energy spectra in inclusive b -> c l nu decays. We also report on the reconstruction, using similar experimental techniques, of the CKM-suppressed decay B -> rho l nu and the extraction of its branching fraction, Br(B0 -> rho- l+ nu) = (2.57 +- 0.29 +0.33/-0.46 +- 0.41) x 10E-4, as well as the value |Vub| = (3.25 +- 0.14 +0.21/-0.29 +- 0.55) x 10E-3, where the uncertainties are statistical, systematic, and due to model dependence, respectively. Finally, we present results on rare two-body charmless hadronic B -> K pi, pi pi, and K K decays and comment briefly on their implications to the geometry of the CKM unitarity triangle, including a bound on gamma.