Inclusive Charmed-Baryon Decays and Lifetimes

We have quantitatively reanalyzed the inclusive charmed-baryon decays. New ingredients are the Voloshin preasymptotic effects in semileptonic decays and the Cabibbo-subleading contributions to both semileptonic and nonleptonic decays. It has been found that the Cabbibo-subleading Voloshin contribution essentially improves the theoretical semileptonic branching ratio of $\Lambda_c^{+}$, in agreement with experiment. The semileptonic branching ratios for $\Xi_c^{+}$ and $\Omega_c^{0}$ are found to be large, i.e., of the order of 20%. The lifetimes hierarchy is in a good qualitative and even quantitative agreement with experiment except for the $\Xi_c^{+}$ lifetime, which is somewhat smaller than the experimental value. Future measurements, especially measurements of the semileptonic branching ratios for $\Omega_c^{0}$, $\Xi_c^{+}$ and $\Xi_c^{0}$ should be decisive for the check of this approach.Comment: 13 pages, Latex, 3 figures included, shortened version, to appear in Z.Phys.

Exclusive-Inclusive Ratio of Semileptonic Lambda_b-Decays

We present theoretical evidence that the exclusive/inclusive ratio of semileptonic $\Lambda_b$-decays exceeds that of semileptonic B-decays where the experimental exclusive/inclusive ratio amounts to about 66%. We start from the observation that the spectator quark model provides a lower bound on the leading order Isgur-Wise function of the $\Lambda_b \to \Lambda_c$ transition in terms of the corresponding $B \to D,D^*$ mesonic Isgur-Wise function. Using experimental data for the $B \to D,D^*$ mesonic Isgur-Wise functions this bound is established. Applying a Bethe-Salpeter model including spectator quark interactions and a QCD sum rule estimate of the $\Lambda_b \to \Lambda_c$ transition form factor which satisfy the spectator quark model bound we predict the exclusive/inclusive ratio of semileptonic $\Lambda_b$ decay rates to lie in a range between 0.81 and 0.92. We also provide an upper bound on the baryonic Isgur-Wise function which is determined from the requirement that the exclusive rate should not exceed the inclusive rate.Comment: RevTeX, 18 pages, 4 figure

Preasymptotic effects in beauty decays

Large preasymptotic effects in beauty decays have been found using heavy-quark and SU(3) symmetry, as well as experimental data on charmed hyperons. Contrary to rather uniform beauty-meson lifetimes, a much larger spread of beauty-baryon lifetimes is predicted. However, it is highly unlikely that, theoretically, the $\tau(\Lambda_b)/\tau(B_d^0)$ ratio, which at present deviates more than $1\sigma$ from the experimental result, can be lowered below 0.9.Comment: 6 pages, talk given by B. Melic at The 3rd International Conference on B Physics and CP Violation, Taipei, Taiwan, December 3-7, 1999, to appear in the Proceedings, two figures adde

Inclusive decays and lifetimes of doubly charmed baryons

The analysis of singly charmed hadrons has been extended to the case of doubly charmed baryons, $\Xi_{cc}^{++}$, $\Xi_{cc}^{+}$ and $\Omega_{cc}^{+}$. Doubly charmed baryons are described as a system containing a heavy $cc$-diquark and a light quark, similarly as in a heavy-light meson. This leads to preasymptotic effects in semileptonic and nonleptonic decays which are essentially proportional to the meson wave function. Interplay between preasymptotic effects in semileptonic and/or nonleptonic decay rates leads to very clear predictions for semileptonic branching ratios and lifetimes of doubly charmed baryons.Comment: 14 pages latex file, 4 figures, 1 tabl