SYSTEMATICS OF EXCLUSIVE B-DECAYS

Within a perturbative QCD framework we present a systematic analysis of the high recoil, in particular two body mesonic, decay channels of the B meson. For decays involving D mesons, all experimentally observed rates are in reasonable accord with our calculations. Noticeable corrections to heavy quark symmetry are found, appearing most prominently when comparing D and D* decay modes. Calculated branching ratios involving the CKM matrix element V(ub) are all below experimental upper bounds, but not markedly so. Calculated decay rates into charmonium lie a bit on the low side. Where color-suppressed diagrams contribute, they are found to be also suppressed dynamically and explicit calculation shows that the color-suppressed diagrams are ignorable in B --> Dpi decays.