Study of $B_c^+$ decays to the $K^+K^-π^+$ final state and evidence for the decay $B_c^+\toχ_{c0}π^+$
hep-ex
/ Authors
LHCb collaboration, R. Aaij, B. Adeva, M. Adinolfi, Z. Ajaltouni, S. Akar, J. Albrecht, F. Alessio, M. Alexander, S. Ali
and 756 more authors
G. Alkhazov, P. Alvarez Cartelle, A. A. Alves, S. Amato, S. Amerio, Y. Amhis, L. An, L. Anderlini, G. Andreassi, M. Andreotti, J. E. Andrews, R. B. Appleby, O. Aquines Gutierrez, F. Archilli, P. d'Argent, J. Arnau Romeu, A. Artamonov, M. Artuso, E. Aslanides, G. Auriemma, M. Baalouch, I. Babuschkin, S. Bachmann, J. J. Back
/ Abstract
A study of $B_c^+\to K^+K^-π^+$ decays is performed for the first time using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.0 $\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ collected by the LHCb experiment in $pp$ collisions at centre-of-mass energies of $7$ and $8$ TeV. Evidence for the decay $B_c^+\toχ_{c0}(\to K^+K^-)π^+$ is reported with a significance of 4.0 standard deviations, resulting in the measurement of $\frac{σ(B_c^+)}{σ(B^+)}\times\mathcal{B}(B_c^+\toχ_{c0}π^+)$ to be $(9.8^{+3.4}_{-3.0}(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.8(\mathrm{syst}))\times 10^{-6}$. Here $\mathcal{B}$ denotes a branching fraction while $σ(B_c^+)$ and $σ(B^+)$ are the production cross-sections for $B_c^+$ and $B^+$ mesons. An indication of $\bar b c$ weak annihilation is found for the region $m(K^-π^+)<1.834\mathrm{\,Ge\kern -0.1em V\!/}c^2$, with a significance of 2.4 standard deviations.