Observation of photon polarization in the $b \to sγ$ transition

Abstract

This Letter presents a study of the flavor-changing neutral current radiative $B^{\pm} \to K^{\pm}π^{\mp}π^{\pm}γ$ decays performed using data collected in proton-proton collisions with the LHCb detector at $7$ and $8\,$TeV center-of-mass energies. In this sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $3\,\text{fb}^{-1}$, nearly $14\,000$ signal events are reconstructed and selected, containing all possible intermediate resonances with a $K^{\pm}π^{\mp}π^{\pm}$ final state in the $[1.1, 1.9]\,$GeV/$c^{2}$ mass range. The distribution of the angle of the photon direction with respect to the plane defined by the final-state hadrons in their rest frame is studied in intervals of $K^{\pm}π^{\mp}π^{\pm}$ mass and the asymmetry between the number of signal events found on each side of the plane is obtained. The first direct observation of the photon polarization in the $b \to sγ$ transition is reported with a significance of $5.2\,σ$.