Weak phases from B decays to kaons and charged pions

Phases of elements of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix can be obtained using decays of B mesons to pi(+)pi(-), pi(+/-)K(-/+), and pi(+)K(0) or pi(-)(K) over bar(0). For B-0 or (B) over bar(0) --> pi(+)pi(-), one identifies the flavor of the neutral B meson at time of production and studies the time dependence of the decay rate. The other processes are self-tagging and only their rates need to be measured. By assuming flavor SU(3) symmetry and first-order SU(3) breaking, one can separately determine the phases gamma=Arg V-ub* and alpha=pi-beta-gamma, where beta=Arg V-td*. Special cases include the vanishing of strong interaction phase differences between amplitudes, the possibility of recovering partial information when pi(+)pi(-) and pi(+/-)K(-/+) decays cannot be distinguished from one another, and the use of a correlation between gamma and alpha in the region of allowed parameters.