A dispersive method to study CP asymmetries in hadronic multi-body $B$ decays

Abstract

We present the details of a dispersive method to construct the amplitudes for hadronic multibody $B$ decays based on the universality of pairwise hadronic final-state interactions at low invariant masses. This approach allows us to split the amplitude into source terms controlled by phenomenological parameters and final-state interactions, governed by the precise knowledge of two-body dynamics, both resonant and non-resonant. As a concrete application, we make use of the well-determined low-energy pion-pion ($\pi\pi$) interactions to understand the enhanced localized CP violation observed in $B^{\pm}\rightarrow K^{\pm}\pi^+\pi^-$. Fitting only angle-integrated CP-asymmetry data, the method successfully predicts the Dalitz plot differential distribution of events and of the CP asymmetry in the low-energy region. This allows for a better understanding of the large localized CP asymmetry recently reported by LHCb, which is shown not to be driven by an absolute enhancement of CP-violating effects, but by a suppression of the CP-conserving part resulting from the interplay of several partial waves. Moreover, we show that the widely-neglected non-resonant isospin-2 contributions play an essential role in the description of CP violation in this system. The method can be straightforwardly adapted to other multibody decays, where final-state two-hadron interactions drive the CP violation.