Penguin Diagrams, Charmless B-Decays and the ``Missing Charm Puzzle''

We calculate the contributions of penguin diagrams with internal u or c quarks to various inclusive charmless B-decay rates. Further we analyze the influence of the chromomagnetic dipole operator Q_8 on these rates. We find that the rates corresponding to B-bar --> X_{u u-bar s}, B-bar --> X_{d d-bar s}, B-bar --> X_{s s-bar s}, B-bar --> X_{s s-bar d} and B --> X_{d d-bar d} are dominated by the new penguin contributions. The contributions of Q_8 sizably diminish these rates. Despite of an increase of the total charmless decay rate by 36 % the new contributions are not large enough to explain the charm deficit observed by ARGUS and CLEO. We predict n_c=1.33 +/- 0.06 for the average number of charmed particles per B-decay in the Standard Model. Then the hypothesis of an enhancement of the chromomagnetic dipole coefficient C_8 by new physics contributions is analyzed. We perform a model independent fit of C_8 to the experimental data. If the CKM structure of the new physics contribution is the same as in the Standard Model, |C_8(M_W)| must be enhanced by a factor of 9 to 16 in order to explain the observed charm deficit.

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