0000000000646730
AUTHOR
Benjam��n Grinstein
Weak decays of unstable $b$-mesons
We investigate the decays of the excited $(b\bar q)$ mesons as probes of the short-distance structure of the weak $\Delta B=1$ transitions. These states are unstable under the electromagnetic or strong interactions although their widths are typically suppressed by phase space. As compared to the pseudoscalar $B$ meson, the purely leptonic decays of the vector $B^*$ are not chirally suppressed and are sensitive to different combinations of the underlying weak effective operators. An interesting example is $B^*_s\to \ell^+\ell^-$, which has a rate that can be accurately predicted in the standard model. The branching fraction is $\mathcal{B}\sim10^{-11}$, irrespective of the lepton flavor and …
Lepton universality violation and lepton flavor conservation in $B$-meson decays
Anomalies in (semi)leptonic $B$-meson decays present interesting patterns that might be revealing the shape of the new physics to come. In order to understand the experimental data, we explore symmetry arguments that lead to the hypothesis of minimal flavor violation. In particular, under the assumption of negligible neutrino mass effects in charged lepton processes, the presence of lepton universality violation without lepton flavor violation naturally arises. This can account for a deficit of $B^+\to K^+\mu\mu$ over $B^+\to K^+ee$ decays with new physics coupled predominantly to muons and a new physics scale of a few TeV. A prediction of this scenario is the modification of processes invo…