$B$ mesons

B mesons are bound states of a b quark and a light anti-quark. While the binding is provided by the strong interaction B mesons can only decay by the weak interaction. Since the top quark mass is large, B mesons are the only mesons containing quarks of the third generation and thus their decays provide a unique opportunity to measure the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix elements V_{cb}, V_{ub}, V_{ts}, and V_{td} which describe the couplings of the third generation of quarks to the lighter quarks. We review experimental results on masses, lifetimes and decays of B mesons. These include measurements of the inclusive production of charmed and non-charmed mesons and baryons, observations of semileptonic B decays, B-\bar{B} mixing, B meson lifetimes, measurements of exclusive hadronic final states with charmed mesons, the search for exclusive hadronic final states without charmed mesons, the first observation of the decay B\to K~*\gamma which is described by an electromagnetic penguin diagram and measurement of the inclusive b\to s \gamma rate. The theoretical implications of these results will be considered.

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Latex file, approx 150 pages. Figures available via anonymous ftp. The postscript version (incl. figures) as well as the uuencoded version (incl figures) are available via anonymous ftp at ftp://pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu/pub/hepex/kh as the files breview.ps and breview.uu Report-no: UH 511-816-95 and OHSTPY-HEP-E-95-010

review
B: decay modes
decay modes: B
B: mass
mass: B
B: lifetime
B0 anti-B0: mixing
factorization
CKM matrix matrix
numerical calculations: interpretation of experiments

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BBB mesons

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$B$ mesons