First observation of the radiative decay $Λ_{b}^{0} \to Λγ$

Abstract

The radiative decay $Λ_{b}^{0} \to Λγ$ is observed for the first time using a data sample of proton-proton collisions corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $1.7\,fb^{-1}$ collected by the LHCb experiment at a center-of-mass energy of $13\,TeV$. Its branching fraction is measured exploiting the $B^{0} \to K^{*0} γ$ decay as a normalization mode and is found to be $\mathcal{B}(Λ_{b}^{0} \to Λγ)= (7.1 \pm 1.5 \pm 0.6 \pm 0.7) \times 10^{-6}$, where the quoted uncertainties are statistical, systematic and systematic from external inputs, respectively. This is the first observation of a radiative decay of a beauty baryon.

All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2019-010.html