Systematics of Soft Final-State Interactions in<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi mathvariant="italic">B</mml:mi></mml:math>Decays

Abstract

By using very general and well established features of soft strong interactions we show, contrary to conventional expectations, that (i) soft final-state interactions (FSI) do not disappear for large ${m}_{B}$, (ii) inelastic rescattering is expected to be the main source of soft FSI phases, and (iii) FSI which interchange charge and/or flavors are suppressed by a power of ${m}_{B}$, but are quite likely to be significant at ${m}_{B}\ensuremath{\simeq}5\mathrm{GeV}$. We briefly discuss the influence of these interactions on tests of CP violation and on theoretical calculations of weak decays.