Irreversibility and dissipation in neutral B-meson decays

The propagation and decay of neutral B-mesons can be described in terms of quantum dynamical semigroups; they provide generalized time-evolutions that take into account possible non-standard effects leading to loss of phase coherence and dissipation. These effects can be fully parametrized in terms of six phenomenological constants. A derailed analysis of selected B-meson decays shows that present and future dedicated experiments, both at colliders and B-factories, will be able to put stringent bounds on these non-standard parameters. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.