| In this thesis we investigate the problem of extracting the unknown form factors, which describe decays of heavy-light mesons, from a given bound state model. We present a simple and straightforward method for relating these form factors, as defined within the covariant trace formalism of the heavy quark effective theory, to the overlaps of the rest frame wave functions of the light degrees of freedom. We also advocate an analysis which uses Regge structure, and the Bjorken and Voloshin sum rules in the heavy quark limit, to restrict the choice of parameters of a given relativistic quark model. Using this approach we examine several hadronic models in the heavy quark limit. Within the framework of the heavy quark effective theory, we also investigate semileptonic and radiative rare B meson decays. |
