Nonleptonic two-body decays of $\Lambda_b\rightarrow \Lambda_c \pi, \Lambda_cK$ in the perturbative QCD approach

Abstract

We study the color-allowed $\Lambda_b\rightarrow \Lambda_c \pi, \Lambda_cK$ decays in the perturbative QCD approach (PQCD) to lowest order in strong coupling constant $\alpha_s$. Both the factorizable and nonfactorizable contributions are taken into account in our calculations. It is found that these processes are dominated by the factorizable contributions, while the important nonfactorizable contributions can enhance the branching ratios by about 30$\%$. The decay branching ratios are predicted to be $\mathcal{B}(\Lambda_b\rightarrow \Lambda_c \pi)=6.7^{+4.1}_{-3.8}\times 10^{-3}$ and $\mathcal{B}(\Lambda_b\rightarrow \Lambda_c K)=5.0^{+4.0}_{-3.0}\times 10^{-4}$, where the uncertainties arise from the baryon light-cone distribution amplitudes (LCDAs), the heavy charm quark and charmed baryon masses, and the hard scales. It is shown that the asymmetry parameters in the two decays are approximately equal to -1, which is expected as in the heavy quark limit and the soft meson limit. Our predictions are consistent with the recent experimental data within errors. The obtained numerical results are also compared to those in the other theoretical approaches when they are available.