Inclusive semileptonic fits, heavy quark masses, and V_cb

We perform global fits to the moments of semileptonic B decay distributions and extract |V_cb|, the heavy quark masses, and the non-perturbative parameters of the heavy quark expansion. We include NNLO perturbative corrections and recent determinations of the charm mass, and discuss how they improve the precision of the global fit. In particular, using the m_c determination of Ref.[11] we get m_b^kin=4.541(23) GeV and |V_cb|=(42.42+- 0.86) 10^{-3}. We also discuss the implications of the new fits for the normalization of rare B decays, the zero-recoil sum rule in B-> D* l nu, and the inclusive determination of |V_ub|.

Normalizing inclusive rare B decays

The inclusive semileptonic branching ratio is often employed to normalize other inclusive B decays. Using recent determinations of the non-perturbative parameters of the Operator Product Expansion we compute the normalization factor for the branching ratio of B->X_s gamma and find a few percent enhancement with respect to previous determinations.