$B \rightarrow \eta_c K(\eta_c^\prime K)$ decays in QCD factorization

Abstract.

We study the exclusive decays of the B meson into pseudoscalar charmonium states $\eta_c$ and $\eta_c^\prime$ within the QCD factorization approach and find that the non-factorizable corrections to naive factorization are infrared safe at leading-twist order. The spectator interactions arising from the kaon twist-3 effects are formally power suppressed but chirally and logarithmically enhanced. An important improvement by including the $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_{\mathrm{s}})$ corrections is the cancellation of the renormalization scale μ dependence of the decay amplitude. However, the calculated decay rates are too small to accommodate the experimental data. On the other hand, we compare the theoretical calculations for B meson decays to $J/\psi, \psi^\prime, \eta_c$ and $\eta_c^\prime$, and find that the predicted relative decay rates of these four states are approximately compatible with the experimental data.