Soft collinear effective theory analysis of B→Kπ, B→KK̅ , and B→ππ decays

B→Kπ and related decays are studied in the heavy quark limit of QCD using the soft collinear effective theory (SCET). We focus on results that follow solely from integrating out the scale m_b, without expanding the amplitudes for the physics at smaller scales such as α_s(√E_πΛ_QCD). The reduction in the number of hadronic parameters in SCET leads to multiple predictions without the need of SU(3). We find that the CP-asymmetry in B^-→π⁰K^- should have a similar magnitude and the same sign as the well measured asymmetry in B̅ ⁰→π⁺K^-. Our prediction for Br(K⁺π^-) exceeds the current experimental value at the 2σ level. We also use our results to determine the corrections to the Lipkin and CP-asymmetry sum rules in the standard model and find them to be quite small, thus sharpening their utility as a tool to look for new physics.