Heavy-Quark Effective Theory

Abstract

We give an introduction to the heavy-quark effective theory and the $1/m_Q$ expansion, which provide the modern framework for a systematic, model-independent description of the properties and decays of hadrons containing a heavy quark. We discuss the applications of these concepts to spectroscopy and to the weak decays of $B$ mesons.

40 pages, 9 figures; Invited talk presented at the 20th Johns Hopkins Workshop on Current Problems in Particle Theory, Heidelberg, Germany, 27-29 June 1996