Hadronic three-body decays of B mesons

Hadronic three-body decays of B mesons receive both resonant and nonresonant contributions. Dominant nonresonant contributions to tree-dominated three-body decays arise from the b -> u tree transition which can be evaluated using heavy meson chiral perturbation theory valid in the soft meson limit. For penguin-dominated decays, nonresonant signals come mainly from the penguin amplitude governed by the matrix elements of scalar densities < M1M2 vertical bar q(1)q(2)vertical bar >. The intermediate vector meson contributions to three-body decays are identified through the vector current, while the scalar meson resonances are mainly associated with the scalar density. We discuss inclusive and regional direct CP asymmetries. In the low mass regions of the Dalitz plot, we find that the regional CP violation is indeed largely enhanced with respect to the inclusive one.