Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to spectator effects in lifetimes of beauty hadrons Original Research Article

Theoretical predictions of beauty hadron lifetimes, based on the heavy quark expansion up to and including order 1/mb2, do not to reproduce the experimental measurements of the lifetime ratios τ(B+)/τ(Bd) and τ(Λb)/τ(Bd). Large corrections to these predictions come from phase-space enhanced 1/mb3 contributions, i.e., hard spectator effects. In this paper we calculate the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the Wilson coefficients of the local operators appearing at O(1/mb3). We find that these corrections improve the agreement with the experimental data. The lifetime ratio of charged to neutral B-mesons, τ(B+)/τ(Bd), turns out to be in very good agreement with the corresponding measurement, whereas for τ(Bs)/τ(Bd) and τ(Λb)/τ(Bd) there is a residual difference at the 1σ level. We discuss, however, why the theoretical predictions are less accurate in the latter cases.