Exploring the Weak Phase gamma in B^+- -> pi K Decays

TL;DR

This paper uses decay rate measurements of B^+- -> pi K and related processes to estimate the weak phase gamma, providing bounds based on preliminary experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a method to extract bounds on gamma from decay rates and applies it to preliminary CLEO data.

Findings

Bounds on gamma: |gamma|>93 degrees at 1 sigma

Bounds on gamma: |gamma|>71 degrees at 90% confidence level

Demonstrates the potential of decay measurements to constrain weak phases

Abstract

Measurements of the rates for the hadronic decays B^+- -> pi K along with the CP-averaged B^+- -> pi^+- pi^0 branching ratio can be used to bound and extract the weak phase gamma=-arg(V_ub). Using preliminary CLEO data, we obtain the bounds |gamma|>93 degrees at 1 sigma, and |gamma|>71 degrees at 90 % confidence level.