Flavour in the Standard Model

Abstract

In this chapter and the following one, we shall give a few sample applications of effective field theories to the flavour physics of the Standard Model. We shall discuss mainly the effective Hamiltonian for flavour transitions derived in the context of the Standard Model, but an extension to models beyond the Standard Model will be obvious. We shall consider first the Hamiltonian for $\Delta F = \pm 1$ processes, i.e. processes in which the flavour quantum numbers change by one unit; $\Delta F = \pm 2$ processes will be discussed in the next chapter. After a few remarks on light-hadron decays, we shall study bottom and charm decays, where one may use the heavy-quark mass expansion. We are not aiming at completeness; rather, we shall only demonstrate how effective-field-theory methods can be applied efficiently.