Search for W boson decays to three charged pions

Abstract

For the first time, a search for the rare decay of the W boson to three charged pions has been performed. Proton-proton collision data recorded by the CMS experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 77.3 fb${}^{-1}$, have been analyzed. No significant excess is observed above the background expectation. An upper limit of 1.01 $\times$ 10${}^{-6}$ is set at 95% confidence level on the branching fraction of the W boson to three charged pions. This provides a strong motivation for theoretical calculations of this branching fraction.

Replaced with the published version. Added the journal reference and the DOI. All the figures and tables can be found at http://cms-results.web.cern.ch/cms-results/public-results/publications/SMP-18-009 (CMS Public Pages)

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