Prospects for rare B decays at Belle II

Abstract: Rare and flavour-changing neutral current decays of the B meson are an important probe in the search for physics beyond the Standard Model. There have recently been several anomalies in rare B decays, and lepton-universality measurements, specifically involving the $b\to s\ell^+\ell^-$ quark transition. These results tend towards a non-Standard-Model interpretation. The Belle II experiment is a next-generation b physics experiment located at SuperKEKB, an upgraded B factory $e^+e^-$ collider, in Tsukuba, Japan. The first collisions are expected in early 2018 with full physics data expected in 2019. This document describes prospects for several rare B decays at Belle II including $b\to s\ell^+\ell^-$ processes and others, such as $b\to(s,\,d)\gamma$ and $b\to s\nu\bar\nu$. Areas where the Belle II program is complementary to that of the currently running LHCb experiment are highlighted.