Evidence for the two-body charmless baryonic decay $B^+ \to p \barΛ$
hep-ex
/ Authors
LHCb collaboration, R. Aaij, B. Adeva, M. Adinolfi, Z. Ajaltouni, S. Akar, J. Albrecht, F. Alessio, M. Alexander, S. Ali
and 762 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, 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, A. Badalov
/ Abstract
A search for the rare two-body charmless baryonic decay $B^+ \to p \barΛ$ is performed with $pp$ collision data, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $3\,\mbox{fb}^{-1}$, collected by the LHCb experiment at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV. An excess of $B^+ \to p \barΛ$ candidates with respect to background expectations is seen with a statistical significance of 4.1 standard deviations, and constitutes the first evidence for this decay. The branching fraction, measured using the $B^+ \to K^0_{\mathrm S} π^+$ decay for normalisation, is \begin{eqnarray} \mathcal{B}(B^+ \to p \barΛ) & = & ( 2.4 \,^{+1.0}_{-0.8} \pm 0.3 ) \times 10^{-7} \,, \nonumber \end{eqnarray} where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic.