Evidence for the Electroweak Penguin Decay $B \to X_{s}\ell^{+}\ell^{-}$}

Abstract

We report a search for the flavor-changing neutral current decay $B \to X_{s} \ell^{+} \ell^{-}$ using a 29.5 fb$^{-1}$ data sample accumulated at the $Υ(4S)$ resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB $e^{+}e^{-}$ storage ring. We observe evidence for $B\to Kμ^+μ^-$ and report the preliminary branching fraction of ${\cal B}(B \to K μ^{+} μ^{-}) = (0.99^{+0.39}_{-0.32}^{+0.13}_{-0.15}) \times 10^{-6}$. We also set the following 90% confidence level upper limits on the branching fractions for exclusive and inclusive decays, ${\cal B}(B \to K e^{+} e^{-}) < 1.2 \times 10^{-6}$, ${\cal B}(B \to K^*(892) e^{+} e^{-}) < 5.1 \times 10^{-6}$, ${\cal B}(B \to K^*(892) μ^{+} μ^{-}) < 3.0 \times 10^{-6}$, ${\cal B}(B \to X_{s} e^{+} e^{-}) < 10.1 \times 10^{-6}$, ${\cal B}(B \to X_{s} μ^{+} μ^{-}) < 19.1 \times 10^{-6}$.

Paper submitted to the 2001 Lepton Photon Conference