Theoretical Overview of Hadronic Three-body B Decays

Understand

Charmless 3-body decays of B mesons are studied in a simple model based on the factorization approach.

• We have identified two distinct sources of nonresonant contributions: a small contribution from the tree transition and a large source of the nonresonant signal in the matrix elements of scalar densities, e.g., $<K\bar K|\bar ss|0>$, induced from the penguin transition.
• This explains the dominance of the nonresonant background in $B\to KKK$ decays, the sizable nonresonant fraction in $K^-\pi^+\pi^-$ and $\bar K^0\pi^+\pi^-$ modes and the smallness of nonresonant rates in $B\to \pi\pi\pi$ decays.
• The seemingly huge discrepancy between BaBar and Belle for the nonresonant contribution in the decay $B^-\to K^-\pi^+\pi^-$ is now relieved.