B-MESON DECAYS

We will confine our discussions to inclusive and semileptonic decays o f the lightest B mesons: B- = (<b(u)over bar>), (B) over bar(0) = (<b( d)over bar>). The study of the decays involves two very different type s of physics: weak and strong interactions. The decays are induced by W-mediated weak interactions. The CKM matrix elements /V-cb/ and /V-ub / can be determined by these inclusive decays. To this end, one has to take into account strong interactions in the underlying weak decays. Studies of strong interactions in the processes are interesting also f or themselves. B decays are, probably, the best probe of long-distance aspects of strong interactions. A field theoretic treatment of inclus ive semileptonic B meson decays has been formulated [1]. This treatmen t not only provides a theoretical justification for the DIS-like parto n model [2,3], but also allows a calculation of nonperturbative QCD ef fects to a high level of accuracy. We will present the main results he re.