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Abstract

This dissertation investigates hadronic multi-body decays of beauty and charm mesons providing insights into both the CKM sector of the Standard Model and strong interaction dynamics at the hadronic energy scale. First, the resonant substructure of the decay D0->4pi is studied. Quantum-entangled D0 bar_D0 pairs produced in electron-positron collisions are used. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 818 pb^−1 recorded by the CLEO-c detector. An amplitude analysis exploiting the full information provided by the five-dimensional phase space is performed to disentangle the various intermediate state components and measure their relative phases. The global decay-rate asymmetry between D0 and bar_D0 decays is measured and a search for CP asymmetries in the amplitude components is conducted; no evidence for CP violation is found. The fractional CP-even content and related hadronic parameters are derived from the amplitude model and found to be consistent with model independent measurements. These hadronic parameters are crucial input for a future measurement of the CP-violating phase gamma in B^±->(D->4pi)K^± decays, where D represents a superposition of D0 and bar_D0 mesons. With currently existing proton-proton collision data collected by the LHCb experiment, a precision of around sigma_gamma = 12 degrees can be achieved, competitive with the most precise single measurement of the CKM angle to date. Second, hadronic multi-body decays of Bs mesons are studied using proton-proton collision data corresponding to 7 fb^−1 recorded by the LHCb detector. The Bs−bar_Bs oscillation frequency is measured from flavor-specific Bs->Ds3pi decays to be delta_ms = (17.7651 ± 0.0084 (stat) ± 0.0058 (syst)) ps^−1, consistent with and significantly more precise than the current world-average value. Mixing-induced CP violation in Bs->DsKpipi decays is explored by means of a time-dependent amplitude analysis. The weak phase difference between Bs->Ds^−K^+pi^+pi^− and bar_Bs->Ds^−K^+pi^+pi^− decays is determined to be gamma = (60 ± 17(stat+syst)) degrees; the most precise measurement of this quantity in the Bs meson system.