Paper detail

Heavy-to-light B meson form factors at large recoil energy -- spectator-scattering corrections

We complete the investigation of loop corrections to hard spectator-scattering in exclusive B meson to light meson transitions by computing the short-distance coefficient (jet-function) from the hard-collinear scale. Adding together the two coefficients from matching QCD to SCET_I to SCET_II, we investigate the size of loop effects on the ratios of heavy-to-light meson form factors at large recoil. We find the corrections from the hard and hard-collinear scales to be of approximately the same size, and significant, but the perturbative expansions appear to be well-behaved. Our calculation provides a non-trivial verification of the factorization arguments. We observe considerable differences between the predictions based on factorization in the heavy-quark limit and current QCD sum rule calculations of the form factors. We also include the hard-collinear correction in the B -> pi pi tree amplitudes, and find an enhancement of the colour-suppressed amplitude relative to the colour-allowed amplitude.