Lifetime-difference pattern of heavy hadrons

The preasymptotic effects originating from the four-quark operators are disentangled from the other contributions by considering appropriate combinations of inclusive decay rates. Under the assumption of the isospin and heavy-quark symmetry, a set of relations connecting charmed and beauty decays is obtained without invoking specific models. The results are compared with other approaches and confronted with experiment. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.