Study of $B_c^+$ decays to the $K^+K^-π^+$ final state and evidence for the decay $B_c^+\toχ_{c0}π^+$

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.

All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://lhcbproject.web.cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/LHCbProjectPublic/LHCb-PAPER-2016-022.html, link to supplemental material inserted in the references