Heavy Hadron Weak Decay Form Factors to Next-to-Leading Order in 1/mQ

Based on the short-distance expansion of currents in the heavy quark effective theory, we derive the exact expressions for the heavyto-heavy meson and baryon weak decay form factors to order 1/mQ in the heavy quark expansion, and to all orders in perturbation theory. We emphasize that the Wilson coefficients in this expansion depend on a kinematic variable w̄ that is different from the velocity transfer w = v ·v′ of the hadrons. Our results generalize existing ones obtained in the leading-logarithmic approximation. Some phenomenological applications are briefly discussed. (submitted to Nuclear Physics B) Supported by the Department of Energy under contract DE-AC03-76SF00515.