Measurement of the Branching Fraction for Inclusive Semileptonic B Meson Decays

Abstract

A largely model-independent measurement of the inclusive electron momentum spectrum and branching fraction for semileptonic decays of B mesons is presented based on data recorded at the Upsilon(4S) resonance with the BABAR detector. Backgrounds from secondary charm decays are separated from prompt B decays using charge and angular correlations between the electron from one B meson and a high momentum electron tag from the second B meson. The resulting branching fraction is BR(B -> X e nu) = (10.87 +-0.18(stat)+-0.30(syst))%. Based on this measurement we determine the CKM matrix element |V_cb|.