Role of "intrinsic charm" in semileptonic B-meson decays

We discuss the role of so-called "intrinsic-charm" operators in semileptonic B-meson decays, which appear first at order 1/m(b)(3) in the heavy quark expansion. We show by explicit calculation that-at scales mu <= m(c)-the contributions from "intrinsic-charm" effects can be absorbed into short-distance coefficient functions multiplying, for instance, the Darwin term. Then, the only remnant of "intrinsic charm" are logarithms of the form ln(m(c)(2)/m(b)(2)), which can be resummed by using renormalization-group techniques. As long as the dynamics at the charm-quark scale is perturbative, alpha(s)(m(c))< 1, this implies that no additional nonperturbative matrix elements aside from the Darwin and the spin-orbit term have to be introduced at order 1/m(b)(3). Hence, no sources for additional hadronic uncertainties have to be taken into account. Similar arguments may be made for higher orders in the 1/m(b) expansion.