SEMILEPTONIC BARYON DECAYS WITH A HEAVY QUARK

The semileptonic decay of spin-1/2 baryons is examined in the spectator-quark model, with special attention given to LAMBDA-b --> LAMBDA-c(e-upsilon) and OMEGA-b --> OMEGA-c(e-upsilon). The polarization of the virtual W and of the daughter baryon is also considered, along with the joint angular distribution between the charged lepton and the daughter-baryon polarization vector. The LAMBDA-b decays with about equal mixtures of transverse to longitudinal W polarization while the OMEGA-b decays with predominately longitudinal W polarization. These reactions are representative of two qualitatively different classes: decays involving baryons whose spectators are spin singlets and those whose spectators are spin triplets.