Anatomy of the pQCD Approach to the Baryonic Decays $\Lambda_b \to p\pi, p K$

Understand

We calculate the CP-averaged branching ratios and CP-violating asymmetries for the two-body charmless hadronic decays $\Lambda_b \to p \pi, pK$ in the perturbative QCD (pQCD) approach to lowest order in $\alpha_s$.

• The baryon distribution amplitudes involved in the factorization formulae are considered to the leading twist accuracy and the distribution amplitudes of the proton are expanded to the next-to-leading conformal spin (i.e., "P" -waves), the moments of which are determined from QCD sum rules.
• Our work shows that the contributions from the factorizable diagrams in $\Lambda_b \to p \pi, pK$ decays are much smaller compared to the non-factorizable diagrams in the conventional pQCD approach.
• We argue that this reflects the estimates of the $\Lambda_b \to p$ transition form factors in the $k_T$ factorization approach, which are found typically an order of magnitude smaller than those estimated in the light-cone sum rules and in the non-relativistic quark model.