Ratios of heavy hadron semileptonic decay rates

Ratios of charmed meson and baryon semileptonic decay rates appear to be satisfactorily described by considering only the lowest-lying (S-wave) hadronic final states and assuming the kinematic factor describing phase space suppression is the same as that for free quarks. For example, the rate for Ds semileptonic decay is known to be (17.0±5.3)% lower than those for D0 or D+, and the model accounts for this difference. When applied to hadrons containing b quarks, this method implies that the Bs semileptonic decay rate is about 1% higher than that of the nonstrange B mesons. This small difference thus suggests surprisingly good local quark-hadron duality for B semileptonic decays, complementing the expectation based on inclusive quark-hadron duality that these differences in rates should not exceed a few tenths of a percent. For Λb semileptonic decay, however, the inclusive rate is predicted to be about 13% greater than that of the nonstrange B mesons. This value, representing a considerable departure from a calculation using a heavy-quark expansion, is close to the corresponding experimental ratio Γ(Λb)/Γ(B)=1.13±0.03 of total decay rates.