delta S = 2 nonleptonic hyperon decays
/ Authors
C. White, R. Burnstein, A. Chakravorty, A. Chan, Y. Chen, W. Choong, K. Clark, E. Dukes, C. Durandet, J. Félix
and 25 more authors
G. Gidal, P. Gu, H. Gustafson, C. Ho, T. Holmstrom, M. Huang, C. James, C. Jenkins, D. Kaplan, L. Lederman, N. Leros, M. Longo, F. Lopez, L. Lu, W. Luebke, K. Luk, K. Nelson, H. Park, J. Perroud, D. Rajaram, H. Rubin, P. Teng, J. Volk, S. White, P. Żyła
/ Abstract
A sensitive search for the rare decays \Omega^- \to \Lambda \pi^- and \Xi^0 \to p \pi^- has been performed using data from the 1997 run of the HyperCP (Fermilab E871) experiment. Limits on other such processes do not exclude the possibility of observable rates for |\Delta S| = 2 nonleptonic hyperon decays, provided the decays occur through parity-odd operators. We obtain the branching-fraction limits B(\Omega^- \to \Lambda \pi^-)< 2.9 x 10^{-6} and B(\Xi^0 \to p \pi^-)< 8.2 x 10^{-6}, both at 90% confidence level.
Journal: Physical Review Letters