Three-body non-leptonic heavy-to-heavy B decays at NNLO in QCD

Abstract

Exclusive non-leptonic two-body decays of B mesons have been studied extensively in the past two decades within the framework of factorization. However, the exploration of the corresponding three-body case has only started recently, in part motivated by new data. We consider here the simplest non-leptonic three-body B decays from the point of view of factorization, namely heavy-to-heavy transitions. We provide a careful derivation of the SCET/QCDF factorized amplitudes to NNLO in αs, and discuss the numerical impact of NLO and NNLO corrections. We then study the narrow-width limit, showing that the three-body amplitude reproduces analytically the known quasi-two-body decay amplitudes, and compute finite-width corrections. Finally, we discuss certain observables that are sensitive to perturbative NLO and NNLO corrections and to higher Gegenbauer moments of the dimeson LCDAs. This is the first study of non-leptonic three-body B decays to NNLO in QCD.