# A useful approximate isospin equality for charmless strange B Decays

## Abstract

A useful inequality is obtained if charmless strange B decays are assumed to be dominated by the gluonic penguin diagram and the tree diagram contribution is small but not negligible. The penguin-tree interference contribution which is linear in the tree amplitude is included but the direct tree contribution which is quadratic is neglected.

It is now believed that charmless strange B decays are dominated by the gluonic penguin diagram. If all other diagrams are negligible, the branching ratios for sets of decays to states in the same isospin multiplets are uniquely related by isospin because the gluonic penguin leads to a pure I=1/2 final state, and there is no simple mechanism in the standard model that can give CP violation.

If the tree diagram produced by the $`\overline{b}\overline{u}u\overline{s}`$ transition at the quark level also contributes, the isospin analysis becomes non-trivial, much more interesting and CP violation can be observed. This case has been considered in great detail by Nir and Quinn.

Our purpose here is to point out and discuss an intermediate case, where the amplitude from the tree diagram is not negligible but still sufficiently small by comparison with the gluonic penguin that its contribution to branching ratios need be considered only to first order, and higher order contributions can be neglected. An interesting approximate sum rule is obtained which can check the validity of this approximation and guide the search for CP violation.

We consider here the $`BK\pi `$ decays. Exactly the same considerations hold for all similar decays into a strange meson and an isovector nonstrange meson.

The gluonic penguin diagram leads to a pure isospin 1/2 state. Its contributions to all $`BK\pi `$ amplitudes, denoted by $`P`$ are simply related by isospin.

$$P(B^+K^+\pi ^o)=P(B^oK^o\pi ^o)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}P(B^oK^+\pi ^{})=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}P(B^+K^o\pi ^+)P$$
$`(1)`$   
The tree diagram has two independent contributions corresponding to the color-favored and color-suppressed couplings of the final quark-antiquark pairs. Their amplitudes, denoted by $`T_f`$ and $`T_s`$ are also simply related by isospin.

$$\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}T_f(B^oK^+\pi ^{})=T_f(B^+K^+\pi ^o)T_f$$
$`(2a)`$   
$$T_s(B^+K^+\pi ^o)=T_s(B^oK^o\pi ^o)T_s$$
$`(2b)`$   
In the approximation where we consider the contributions of the tree amplitudes only to first order, we obtain:

$$BR(B^oK^+\pi ^{})2P^2+4PT_f$$
$`(3a)`$   
$$BR(B^oK^o\pi ^o)P^22PT_s$$
$`(3b)`$   
$$BR(B^+K^o\pi ^+)2P^2$$
$`(3c)`$   
$$BR(B^+K^+\pi ^o)P^2+2PT_f+2PT_s$$
$`(3d)`$   
This leads to the approximate equality

$$BR(B^oK^+\pi ^{})2BR(B^oK^o\pi ^o)2BR(B^+K^+\pi ^o)BR(B^+K^o\pi ^+)$$

$$4PT_f+4PT_s=4P(T_f+T_s)\mathrm{cos}(\varphi _\mathrm{P}\varphi _\mathrm{T}\varphi _\mathrm{S})$$
$`(4\mathrm{a})`$   
where $`\varphi _P`$ and $`\varphi _T`$ are the weak phases respectively of the penguin and tree amplitudes and $`\varphi _S`$ is the strong phase difference between the two. Note that both the left-hand and right hand sides vanish independently for any transition like the pure gluonic penguin that leads to a pure I=1/2 state. The relation (4) therefore is due entirely to interference between the penguin I=1/2 amplitude and the I=3/2 component of the tree amplitude. This immediately leads to the correspnding expression for the charge-conjugate decays,

$$BR(\overline{B}^oK^{}\pi ^+)2BR(\overline{B}^o\overline{K}^o\pi ^o)2BR(B^{}K^{}\pi ^o)BR(B^{}\overline{K}^o\pi ^{})$$

$$4P(T_f+T_s)\mathrm{cos}(\varphi _\mathrm{P}\varphi _\mathrm{T}+\varphi _\mathrm{S})$$
$`(4\mathrm{b})`$   
The direct CP violation is seen to be given by

$$\frac{2BR(B^{}K^{}\pi ^o)2BR(B^+K^+\pi ^o)BR(B^{}\overline{K}^o\pi ^{})+BR(B^+K^o\pi ^+)}{2BR(B^{}K^{}\pi ^o)+2BR(B^+K^+\pi ^o)BR(B^{}\overline{K}^o\pi ^{})BR(B^+K^o\pi ^+)}$$

$$\mathrm{tan}(\varphi _\mathrm{P}\varphi _\mathrm{T})\mathrm{tan}(\varphi _\mathrm{S})$$
$`(5)`$   
The same equality (4) is easily seen in the formalism used by Nir and Quinn using their three amplitudes denoted by $`U`$, $`V`$ and $`W`$. The $`W`$ amplitude is the penguin amplitude and the the two tree amplitudes $`U`$ and $`V`$ are linear combinations of our $`T_f`$ and $`T_s`$ amplitudes, defined by isospin properties rather than quark diagrams.

$$BR(B^oK^+\pi ^{})2BR(B^oK^o\pi ^o)=2W(U+V)+2(V^2U^2)2W(U+V)$$
$`(6a)`$   
$$2BR(B^+K^+\pi ^o)BR(B^+K^o\pi ^+)=2W(U+V)2(V^2U^2)2W(U+V)$$
$`(6b)`$   
It is interesting to note that here also one sees the apparent miracle that the $`same`$ linear combination of the two tree amplitudes, $`U+V`$ appears in both expressions (6a) and (6b) and that the approximate equality follows from the approximation that quadratic terms in U and V are negligible in comparison with the product of the linear terms and the dominant penguin amplitude W.

$$(V^2U^2)<<W(U+V)$$
$`(7)`$   
The relations (3) neglect the contribution of annihilation diagrams and diagrams in which a flavor-changing final state interaction like charge exchange follows the weak tree diagram. However, both the annihilation diagram and the charge exchange diagram which proceeds via the quark annihilation and pair creation transition $`u\overline{u}`$ gluons $`d\overline{d}`$ lead to pure I=1/2 final states and their contributions cancel in the sum rule (4). The contributions of electroweak penguin amplitudes are not taken into account.

###### Acknowledgements.

It is a pleasure to thank Yosef Nir for helpful discussions and comments. This work was partially supported by the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development (GIF).