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Anomalies in hadronic $B$ decays: An update

Bhubanjyoti Bhattacharya ^1,*, Marianne Bouchard ^2,†, Luke Hudy ^1,‡, Alexandre Jean ^2,§, David London ^2,∥, and Christopher MacKenzie ^1,¶

¹Department of Natural Sciences, Lawrence Technological University, Southfield, Michigan 48075, USA
²Physique des Particules, Université de Montréal, 1375 Avenue Thérèse-Lavoie-Roux, Montréal, Quebec H2V 0B3, Canada

^*Contact author: bbhattach@ltu.edu
^†Contact author: marianne.bouchard.5@umontreal.ca
^‡Contact author: lhudy@ltu.edu
^§Contact author: alexandre.jean.1@umontreal.ca
^∥Contact author: london@lps.umontreal.ca
^¶Contact author: cmackenzi@ltu.edu

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Phys. Rev. D 112, 056014 – Published 15 September, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/5jp1-7cfw

Abstract

Recently, $B \to P P$ decays ( $B = {B^{0}, B^{+}, B_{s}^{0}}$ , $P = {π, K}$ ) were analyzed under the assumption of flavor SU(3) symmetry ( ${SU (3)}_{F}$ ). Although the individual fits to $Δ S = 0$ or $Δ S = 1$ decays are good, it was found that the combined fit is very poor: there is a $3.6 σ$ disagreement with the ${SU (3)}_{F}$ limit of the standard model ( ${SM}_{{SU (3)}_{F}}$ ). One can remove this discrepancy by adding ${SU (3)}_{F}$ -breaking effects, but 1000% ${SU (3)}_{F}$ breaking is required. In this paper, we extend this analysis to include decays in which there is an $η$ and/or $η^{'}$ meson in the final state. We now find that the combined fit exhibits a $4.1 σ$ discrepancy with the ${SM}_{{SU (3)}_{F}}$ , and 1000% ${SU (3)}_{F}$ -breaking effects are still required to explain the data. These results are rigorous, group-theoretically—no theoretical assumptions have been made. But when one adds some theoretical input motivated by QCD factorization, the discrepancy with the ${SM}_{{SU (3)}_{F}}$ grows to $4.9 σ$ .

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Phys. Rev. D 112, 056014– Published 15 September, 2025

Vol. 112, Iss. 5 — 1 September 2025

Received 12 June 2025
Accepted 11 August 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/5jp1-7cfw

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP³.

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Anomalies in hadronic $B$ decays: An update

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