Charmless hadronic B decays and the recent CLEO data

In the light of recent experimental data from the CLEO Collaboration we study, the decays of B mesons to a pair of pseudoscalar (P) mesons, and a vector (V) meson and a pseudoscalar meson, in the framework of factorization. In order to obtain the best fit for the recent CLEO data, we critically examine the values of several input parameters to which the predictions are sensitive. These input parameters are the form factors, the strange quark mass, $\xi \equiv 1/ N_c$ (N_c is the effective number of color), the CKM matrix elements and in particular, the weak phase $\gamma$. It is possible to give a satisfactory account of the recent experimental results in $B \to PP$ and VP decays, with constrained values of a \emph{single} $\xi$. We identify the decay modes in which CP asymmetries are expected to be large.Comment: 24 pages, 11 figures, LaTex; Version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Coannihilation Effects in Supergravity and D-Brane Models

Coannihilation effects in neutralino relic density calculations are examined for a full range of supersymmetry parameters including large \tan\beta and large A_0 for stau, chargino, stop and sbottom coannihilation with the neutralino. Supergravity models possessing grand unification with universal soft breaking (mSUGRA), models with nonuniversal soft breaking in the Higgs and third generation sparticles, and D-brane models with nonuniversal gaugino masses were analysed. Unlike low \tan\beta where m_0 is generally small, stau coannihilation corridors with high \tan\beta are highly sensitive to A_0, and large A_0 allows m_0 to become as large as 1TeV. Nonuniversal soft breaking models at high \tan\beta also allow the opening of a new annihilation channel through the s-channel Z pole with acceptable relic density, allowing a new wide band in the m_0-m_{1/2} plane with m_{1/2} >~ 400 GeV and $m_0$ rising to 1 TeV. The D-brane models considered possess stau coannihilations regions similar to mSUGRA, as well as small regions of chargino coannihilation. Neutralino-proton cross sections are analysed for all models and it is found that future detectors for halo wimps will be able to scan essentially the full parameter space with m_{1/2} < 1 TeV except for a region with \mu < 0 where accidental cancellations occur when 5 ~<\tan\beta ~< 30. Analytic explanations of much of the above phenomena are given. The above analyses include current LEP bounds on the Higgs mass, large \tan\beta NLO correction to the b \to s \gamma decay, and large \tan\beta SUSY corrections to the b and \tau masses.Comment: 25 pages, latex, 13 figures, references adde