LAUSR

The $B$-meson light-cone distribution amplitude is a central quantity governing non-perturbative hadronic dynamics in exclusive $B$ decays. We show that the information needed to describe such processes at leading power in $\Lambda_{\rm QCD}/m_b$ is most directly contained in its Laplace transform $\tilde\phi_+(\eta)$. We derive the renormalization-group (RG) equation satisfied by this function and present its exact solution. We express the RG-improved QCD factorization theorem for the decay $B^-\to\gamma\ell^-\bar\nu$ in terms of $\tilde\phi_+(\eta)$ and show that it is explicitly independent of the factorization scale. We propose an unbiased parameterization of $\tilde\phi_+(\eta)$ in terms of a small set of uncorrelated hadronic parameters.