New physics effects in tree-level decays and the precision in the determination of the quark mixing angle γ.

We critically review the assumption that no new physics is acting in tree-level B-meson decays and study the consequences for the ultimate precision in the direct determination of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) angle γ. In our exploratory study we find that sizeable universal new physics contributions, ΔC1,2, to the tree-level Wilson coefficients C1,2 of the effective Hamiltonian describing weak decays of the b quark are currently not excluded by experimental data. In particular, we find that ImΔC1 and ImΔC2 can easily be of order ±10% without violating any constraints from data. Such a size of new physics effects in C1 and C2 corresponds to an intrinsic uncertainty in the CKM angle γ …