https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s2005-02169-1
experimental physics
CP violation and the CKM matrix: assessing the impact of the asymmetric B factories
1
Centre de Physique Théorique, UMR 6207 du CNRS associée aux Universités d’Aix-Marseille I et II et Université du Sud Toulon-Var; laboratoire affilié á la FRUMAM-FR2291, Campus de Luminy, Case 907, 13288, Marseille Cedex 9, France
2
Laboratoire de l’Accélérateur Linéaire, UMR 8607 du CNRS-IN2P3 associée á l’Université Paris XI, Bât. 200, BP34, 91898, Orsay, France
3
Institut für Kern- und Teilchenphysik, Technische Universität Dresden, 01062, Dresden, Germany
4
Laboratoire d’Annecy-Le-Vieux de Physique des Particules, UMR 5814 du CNRS-IN2P3 associée á l’Université de Savoie, 9 Chemin de Bellevue, BP 110, 74941, Annecy-le-Vieux Cedex, France
5
Laboratoire de Physique Nucléaire et de Hautes Energies, UMR 7585 du CNRS-IN2P3 associée aux Universités Paris VI et VII, 4 place Jussieu, 75252, Paris Cedex 05, France
6
PH Department, CERN, 1211, Geneva 23, Switzerland
* e-mail: charles@cpt.univ-mrs.fr
We present an up-to-date profile of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix with emphasis on the interpretation of recent CP-violation results from the B factories. For this purpose, we review all relevant experimental and theoretical inputs from the contributing domains of electroweak interaction. We give the “standard” determination of the apex of the Unitarity Triangle, namely the Wolfenstein parameters 
and 
, by means of a global CKM fit. The fit is dominated by the precision measurement of 
by the B factories. A detailed numerical and graphical study of the impact of the results is presented. We propose to include 
from the recent measurement of the time-dependent CP-violating asymmetries in 
, using isospin relations to discriminate the penguin contribution. The constraint from 
is discussed. We study the impact from the branching fraction measurement of the rare kaon decay 
, and give an outlook into the reach of a future measurement of 
. The B system is investigated in detail. We display the constraint on 
and 
from 
and 
decays, respectively. A significant part of this paper is dedicated to the understanding of the dynamics of B decays into 
, 
, 
, 
and modes related to these by flavor symmetry. Various phenomenological approaches and theoretical frameworks are discussed. We find a remarkable agreement of the and data with the other constraints in the unitarity plane when the hadronic matrix elements are calculated within QCD Factorization, where we apply a conservative treatment of the theoretical uncertainties. A global fit of QCD Factorization to all and data leads to precise predictions of the related observables. However sizable phenomenological power corrections are preferred. Using an isospin-based phenomenological parameterization, we analyze separately the 
decays, and the impact of electroweak penguins in response to recent discussions. We find that the present data are not sufficiently precise to constrain either electroweak parameters or hadronic amplitude ratios. We do not observe any unambiguous sign of New Physics, whereas there is some evidence for potentially large non-perturbative rescattering effects. Finally we use a model-independent description of a large class of New Physics effects in both 
mixing and B decays, namely in the 
and 
gluonic penguin amplitudes, to perform a new numerical analysis. Significant non-standard corrections cannot be excluded yet, however Standard Model solutions are favored in most cases. In the appendix to this paper we propose a frequentist method to extract a confidence level on 
from the experimental information on 
oscillation. In addition we describe a novel approach to combine potentially inconsistent measurements. All results reported in this paper have been obtained with the numerical analysis package CKMfitter, featuring the frequentist statistical approach Rfit.
© Springer-Verlag, 2005
