Rare hadronic B-meson decays allow us to study CP violation. The class of B-decays final states containing two vector mesons provides a rich set of angular correlation observables to study. This article reviews some of the recent experimental results from the BABAR and Belle collaborations.

The high cross-section for the production of b quarks at the Tevatron hadron collider make it an ideal place to search for rare B meson species and very low branching fraction decay modes of the more common B mesons. This paper reports the recent discovery of the Bc meson by the CDF collaboration. It also discusses the observation of rare B meson final states involving [psi](2S) mesons and searches for ultra-rare decays such as B [yields] [mu][sup +][mu][sup -].

B mesons are unique among well-established non-quarkonium mesons in their ability to decay into baryons. Baryonic B decays offer a wide range of interesting areas of study: they can be used to test our theoretical understanding of rare decay processes involving baryons, search for direct CP violation and study low-energy QCD. This thesis presents measurements of branching fractions and a study of the decay dynamics of the charmless three-body decays of B meson into p{bar p}h final states, where h = {pi}{sup +}, K{sup +}, K{sub S}{sup 0}, K*{sup 0} or K*{sup +}. With a sample of 232 million {Upsilon}(4S) {yields} B{bar B} events collected with the BaBar detector, we report the first observation of the B {yields} p{bar p}K*{sup 0} decay, and provide improved measurements of branching fractions of the other modes. The distribution of the three final-state particles is of particular interest since it provides dynamical information on the possible presence of exotic intermediate states such as the hypothetical pentaquark states {Theta}*{sup ++} and {Theta}{sup +}in the m{sub pK{sup +}} and m{sub pK{sub S}{sup 0}} spectra, respectively, or glueball states (such as the tensor glueball f{sub J}(2220)) in the m{sub p{bar p}} spectrum. No evidence for exotic states is found and upper limits on the branching fractions are set. An enhancement at low p{bar p} mass is observed in all the B {yields} p{bar p}h modes, and its shape is compared between the decay modes and with the shape of the time-like proton form factor. A Dalitz plot asymmetry in B {yields} p{bar p}K{sup +} mode suggests dominance of the penguin amplitude in this decay and disfavors the possibility that the low mass p{bar p} enhancement originates from the presence of a resonance below threshold (such as the recently seen baryonium candidate at 1835 MeV/c{sup 2}). We also identify decays of the type B {yields} X{sub c{bar c}}h {yields} p{bar p}h, where h = K{sup +}, K{sub S}{sup 0}, K*{sup 0} or K*{sup +}, and X{sub c{bar c}} = {eta}{sub c} or J/{psi}. In particular, we report on the evidence of the B {yields} {eta}{sub c}K*{sup +} decay and provide a measurement of the width of {eta}{sub c}.

We report evidence for the B meson decays, B{sup ±} 2!J/[psi][eta]K{sup ±} and B° 2!J/[psi][eta]K{sub S}°, using 90 million B{bar B} events collected at the [Upsilon](4S) resonance with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II ee− asymmetric-energy storage ring. We obtain preliminary branching fractions in the charged and neutral channels of (10.8 ± 2.3(stat.) ± 2.4(syst.)) x 10−5 and (8.4 {+-} 2.6(stat.) {+-} 2.7(syst.)) x 10−5, respectively.