Testing QCD factorization and charming penguin diagrams in charmless B→PV -: art. no. 094019

We try a global fit of the experimental branching ratios and CP asymmetries of the charmless B-->PV decays according to QCD factorization. We find it impossible to reach satisfactory agreement, the confidence level (C. L.) of the best fit being smaller than 0.1%. The main reason for this failure is the difficulty to accommodate several large experimental branching ratios of the strange channels. Furthermore, experiment was not able to exclude a large direct CP asymmetry in (B-0) over bar -->rho(+)pi(=), which is predicted to be very small by QCD factorization. Trying a fit with QCD factorization complemented by a charming-penguin-diagram-inspired model we reach a best fit which is not excluded by experiment (C. L. of about 8%) but is not fully convincing. These negative results must be tempered by the remark that some of the experimental data used are recent and might still evolve significantly.