Evidence for the decay $B_{s}^0 \rightarrow \overline{K}{}^{*0}μ^+μ^-$

Abstract

A search for the decay $B_{s}^0 \rightarrow \overline{K}{}^{*0}μ^+μ^-$ is presented using data sets corresponding to 1.0, 2.0 and 1.6 $\text{fb}^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity collected during $pp$ collisions with the LHCb experiment at centre-of-mass energies of 7, 8 and 13 TeV, respectively. An excess is found over the background-only hypothesis with a significance of 3.4 standard deviations. The branching fraction of the $B_{s}^0 \rightarrow \overline{K}{}^{*0}μ^+μ^-$ decay is determined to be $\mathcal{B}(B_{s}^0 \rightarrow \overline{K}{}^{*0}μ^+μ^-) = [2.9 \pm 1.0~(\text{stat}) \pm 0.2~(\text{syst}) \pm 0.3~(\text{norm})] \times 10^{-8}$, where the first and second uncertainties are statistical and systematic, respectively. The third uncertainty is due to limited knowledge of external parameters used to normalise the branching fraction measurement.

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-2018-004.html