Four-fermion heavy quark operators and light current amplitudes in heavy flavor hadrons

Abstract

We introduce and study the properties of the "color-straight" four-quark operators containing heavy and light quark fields. They are of the form (\bar bΓ_b b)(\bar qΓ_q q) where both brackets are color singlets. Their expectation values include the bulk of the nonfactorizable contributions to the nonleptonic decay widths of heavy hadrons. The expectation values of the color-straight operators in the heavy hadrons are related to the momentum integrals of the elastic light-quark formfactors of the respective heavy hadron. We calculate the asymptotic behavior of the light-current formfactors of heavy hadrons and show that the actual decrease is 1/(q^2)^3/2 rather than 1/q^4. The two-loop hybrid anomalous dimensions of the four-quark operators and their mixing (absent in the first loop) are obtained. Using plausible models for the elastic formfactors, we estimate the expectation values of the color-straight operators in the heavy mesons and baryons. Improved estimates will be possible in the future with new data on the radiative decays of heavy hadrons. We give the Wilson coefficients of the four-fermion operators in the 1/m_b expansion of the inclusive widths and discuss the numerical predictions. Estimates of the nonfactorizable expectation values are given.