Semi-leptonic Decays of Heavy Flavours on a Fine Grained Lattice

TL;DR

This paper presents a lattice QCD calculation of semi-leptonic form factors for heavy meson decays, comparing results with experimental data and HQET predictions, and estimating decay widths.

Contribution

It provides new lattice QCD results for semi-leptonic form factors at fine lattice spacing, including extrapolations to B mesons and decay width estimates.

Findings

Form factors are consistent with experimental data.

Results support HQET predictions for heavy quark behavior.

Decay width estimates offer upper bounds for B meson decays.

Abstract

We present the results of a numerical calculation of semi-leptonic form factors relevant for heavy flavour meson decays into light mesons, at $\beta=6.4$ on a $24^3 \times 60$ lattice, using the Wilson action in the quenched approximation. We obtain $f^+_K(0)=0.65\pm 0.18$, $V(0)=0.95\pm 0.34$, $A_1(0)=0.63\pm 0.14 $ and $A_2(0)=0.45\pm 0.33 $. We also obtain $A_1(q^2_{max})=0.62\pm 0.09$, $V(0)/A_1(0)=1.5\pm 0.28 $ and $A_2(0)/A_1(0)=0.7\pm 0.4$. The results for $f^+_K(0)$, $V(0)$ and $A_1(0)$ are consistent with the experimental data and with previous lattice determinations with larger lattice spacings. In the case of $A_2(0)$ the errors are too large to draw any firm conclusion. We have also extrapolated the form factors to the B meson, showing a behaviour compatible with the predictions by the heavy quark effective theory (HQET). Within large uncertainties, our results suggest that $A_2/A_1$ increases with the heavy quark mass. We also get very rough estimates for the partial decay widths $B \rightarrow \pi l \nu_l)=\vert V_{ub} \vert^2 (12 \pm 8) 10^{12} s^{-1}$ and $\Gamma(B \rightarrow \rho l \nu_l)=\vert V_{ub} \vert^2 (13 \pm12) 10^{12} s^{-1}$, which can be used to give upper bounds on the rates