Lifetimes and CP asymmetries of B-flavoured hadrons

by Ulrich Nierste (FNAL)

Friday 2 Apr 2004, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

TH Auditorium (CERN)

Inclusive decay rates of hadrons containing a b quark can be computed in terms of an expansion in inverse powers of the heavy quark mass, the Heavy Quark Expansion (HQE). New precision measurements of hadron lifetimes from the B factories and the Tevatron require refined theory predictions, which include next-to-leading-order QCD corrections. I also discuss the CP asymmetry in flavour-specific decays, which can be computed with the same method and is very sensitive to physics beyond the Standard Model. I present the status of these calculations, briefly touching the charm system as well.