Search for the decay mode $B^0\to pp\bar{p}\bar{p}$

Abstract

A search is presented for the four-body decay $B^0\to pp\bar{p}\bar{p}$ in a sample of $471$ million $B\bar{B}$ pairs collected with the BaBar detector, operated at the SLAC PEP-II asymmetric-energy $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ collider. The center-of-mass energy is $10.58$ GeV. From a fit to the distribution of the energy-substituted mass $m_{\mathrm{ES}}$, the result $\mathcal{B}(B^0\to pp\bar{p}\bar{p})=(1.1\pm 0.5\pm 0.2)\times 10^{-7}$ is extracted, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic. The significance of the signal is $2.9$ standard deviations. The upper limit on the branching fraction is determined to be $2.0\times 10^{-7}$ at $90\%$ confidence level.

7 pages, 6 figures. To be submitted to Phys. Rev. D (Rapid Communications)