Eur. Phys. J. C (2009) 60: 279-284
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-009-0883-8

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Final-state polarization in B _s ⁰ decays

¹ Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, 108 Lewis Hall, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, 38677-1848, USA
² Physique des Particules, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, succ. centre-ville, Montréal, QC, Canada H3C 3J7,
³ IFAE, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain

^* e-mail: matias@ifae.es

Received: 31 October 2008
Revised: 6 December 2008
Published online: 12 February 2009

Abstract

Certain B _s ⁰ →V ₁ V ₂ decays (V _i is a vector meson) can be related by flavor SU(3) symmetry to corresponding B _d ⁰ →V ₃ V ₄ decays. In this paper, we show that the final-state polarization can be predicted in the B _s ⁰ decay, assuming polarization measurements of the B _d ⁰ decay. This can be done within the scenario of penguin annihilation (PA), which has been suggested as an explanation of the unexpectedly large transverse polarization in B→φ K ^*. PA is used to estimate the breaking of flavor SU(3) symmetry in pairs of decays. Two of these for which PA makes a reasonably precise prediction of the size of SU(3) breaking are (B _s ⁰ →φ φ,B _d ⁰ →φ K ^0*) and ( ). The polarization measurement in the B _d ⁰ decay can be used to predict the transverse polarization in the B _s ⁰ decay and will allow for testing of PA as well as the other assumptions in the analysis.