Final-state interactions ands-quark helicity conservation inB→J/ψK*

The latest BaBar Collaboration measurement has confirmed substantial strong phases for the $\overrightarrow{B}J/\psi K^{*}$ decay amplitudes, implying violation of factorization in this decay mode. In the absence of a polarization measurement of a lepton pair from $J/\psi ,$ however, the relative phases of the spin amplitudes still have a twofold ambiguity. In one set of the allowed phases the s-quark helicity is conserved approximately despite final-state interactions. In the other set, the s-quark helicity is badly violated by long-distance interactions. We cannot rule out the latter since the validity of perturbative QCD is questionable for this decay. We examine the large final-state interactions with a statistical model. Toward a resolution of the ambiguity without a lepton polarization measurement, we discuss the relevance of other $\overrightarrow{B}{1}^{-}{1}^{-}$ decay modes that involve the same feature.