Okubo-Zweig-Iizuka-rule violation and B\to η^{(\prime)}K branching ratios

Abstract

We show that few-percent Okubo-Zweig-Iizuka-rule violating effects in the quark-flavor basis for the $\eta$-${\eta }^{\prime }$ mixing can enhance the chiral scale associated with the ${\eta }_q$ meson few times. This enhancement is sufficient for accommodating the dramatically different data of the $B\to {\eta }^{\prime }K$ and $B\to \eta K$ branching ratios. We comment on other proposals for resolving this problem, including flavor-singlet contributions, axial U(1) anomaly, and nonperturbative charming penguins. Discrimination of the above proposals by means of the $B\to {\eta }^{(\prime )}\ell \nu$ and $B_s\to {\eta }^{(\prime )}\ell \ell$ data is suggested.

7 pages, 2 figures, discussion on B\toη^{(\prime)}K* added, more references added

References in corpus (1)

• $B\to {\eta }^{(\prime )}({\ell }^{-}{\bar{\nu }}_{\ell },{\ell }^{+}{\ell }^{-},K,K^{\ast })$ decays in the quark-flavor mixing scheme