A Review of Hadronic and Rare B Decays

We review recent experimental results on B meson decays. These include measurements of the inclusive production of charmed and non-charmed mesons and baryons, the reconstruction of a large number of exclusive hadronic final states with charmed mesons, the search for exclusive hadronic final states without charmed mesons, and the first observation of the decay B-> K* gamma which is described by an electromagnetic penguin diagram. The theoretical implications of these results will be considered. The figures can be obtained in postscript format EMAIL from [email protected]: 77 pages; CLNS 93/1261, UH-511-778-93, OHSTPY-HEP-E-93-018, HEPSY 93-1

Rare b Decays

Rare b decays provide a unique opportunity to measure Standard Model parameters and probe beyond the Standard Model. We review here the experimentalprogress made in measuring these decays, and the importance of future measurements, including the possible observation of CP violation.Comment: To be published in International Journal of Modern Physics Letters A This is a 34 page review article, the file is uuencoded postscrip

Observation of the B+→D∗−K+π+B^+ \to D^{*-}K^+\pi^+ decay

The $B^+ \to D^{*-}K^+\pi^+$ decay potentially provides an excellent way to investigate charm meson spectroscopy. The decay is searched for in a sample of proton-proton collision data collected with the LHCb detector at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $3~{\rm fb}^{-1}$. A clear signal is observed, and the ratio of its branching fraction to that of the $B^+ \to D^{*-}\pi^+\pi^+$ normalisation channel is measured to be \begin{equation*} \frac{\mathcal{B}(B^+ \to D^{*-}K^+\pi^+)}{\mathcal{B}(B^+ \to D^{*-}\pi^+\pi^+)} = \left( 6.39 \pm 0.27 \pm 0.48 \right) \times 10^{-2} \, , \end{equation*} where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic. This is the first observation of the $B^+ \to D^{*-}K^+\pi^+$ decay