Study of the kinematic dependences of $Λ_b^0$ production in $pp$ collisions and a measurement of the $Λ_b^0 \rightarrow Λ_c^+ π^-$ branching fraction

The kinematic dependences of the relative production rates, $f_{Λ_b^0}/f_d$, of $Λ_b^0$ baryons and $\bar{B}^0$ mesons are measured using $Λ_b^0 \rightarrow Λ_c^+ π^-$ and $\bar{B}^0 \rightarrow D^+ π^-$ decays. The measurements use proton-proton collision data, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1 fb$^{-1}$ at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV, recorded in the forward region with the LHCb experiment. The relative production rates are observed to depend on the transverse momentum, $p_T$, and pseudorapidity, $η$, of the beauty hadron, in the studied kinematic region $1.5 < p_T < 40$ GeV/$c$ and $2 < η< 5$. Using a previous LHCb measurement of $f_{Λ_b^0}/f_d$ in semileptonic decays, the branching fraction $\mathcal{B}(Λ_b^0 \rightarrow Λ_c^+ π^-) = \Big( 4.30 \pm 0.03 \,\, ^{+0.12}_{-0.11} \pm 0.26 \pm 0.21 \Big) \times 10^{-3}$ is obtained, where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second is systematic, the third is from the previous LHCb measurement of $f_{Λ_b^0}/f_d$ and the fourth is due to the $\bar{B}^0 \rightarrow D^+ π^-$ branching fraction. This is the most precise measurement of a $Λ_b^0$ branching fraction to date.