Search for the highly suppressed decays B- -> K+ pi- pi- and B- -> K- K- pi+

Abstract

We report a search for the decays B- -> K+ pi- pi- and B- -> K- K- pi+, which are highly suppressed in the Standard Model. Using a sample of (467 +/- 5) x 10^6 BBbar pairs collected with the BaBar detector, we do not see any evidence of these decays and determine 90% confidence level upper limits of BF(B- -> K+ pi- pi-) < 9.5 x 10^-7 and BF(B- -> K- K- pi+) < 1.6 x 10^-7 on the corresponding branching fractions, including systematic uncertainties.

8 pages, 3 postscript figures, 1 table, published in Physical Review D (Rapid Communications). Updates in v2 are minor changes to the text and Fig. 1 following interaction with journal referees and editors