Accumulating evidence for nonstandard leptonic decays of Ds mesons.

The measured rate for D{s}{+}-->l+nu decays, where l is a muon or tau, is larger than the standard model prediction, which relies on lattice QCD, at the 3.8sigma level. We discuss how robust the theoretical prediction is, and we show that the discrepancy with experiment may be explained by a charged Higgs boson or a leptoquark.

Mass of the Bc meson in three-flavor lattice QCD.

We use lattice QCD to predict the mass of the Bc meson. We use the MILC Collaboration's ensembles of lattice gauge fields, which have a quark sea with two flavors much lighter than a third. Our final result is mBc = 6304+/-12(+18)(-0) MeV. The first error bar is a sum in quadrature of statistical and systematic uncertainties, and the second is an estimate of heavy-quark discretization effects.