B→D*lν and B→Dlν form factors in staggered chiral perturbation theory

We calculate the B→D and B→D* form factors at zero recoil in staggered chiral perturbation theory. We consider heavy-light mesons in which only the light (u, d, or s) quark is staggered; current lattice simulations generally use a highly improved action such as the Fermilab or nonrelativistic QCD action for the heavy (b or c) quark. We work to lowest nontrivial order in the heavy-quark expansion and to one-loop order in the chiral expansion. We present results for a partially quenched theory with three sea quarks in which there are no mass degeneracies (the "1+1+1" theory) and for a partially quenched theory in which the u and d sea quark masses are equal (the "2+1" theory). We also present results for full (2+1) QCD, along with a numerical estimate of the size of staggered discretization errors. Finally, we calculate the finite volume corrections to the form factors and estimate their numerical size in current lattice simulations.