Search for $B^{-}\to \hat{I}›\bar{p}\hat{I}½\bar{\hat{I}}½$ with the BABAR experiment

Abstract

We search for the rare flavor-changing neutral current process $B^{-}\to \hat{I}›\overline{p}\hat{I}½\overline{\hat{I}}½$ using data from the BABAR experiment. A total of 424 fb${}^{-1}$ of $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ collision data collected at the center-of-mass energy of the $\hat{I}\yen$(4S) resonance is used in this study, corresponding to a sample of $(471\pm 3)\times 10^6$ $B\overline{B}$ pairs. Signal $B^{-}\to \hat{I}›\overline{p}\hat{I}½\overline{\hat{I}}½$ candidates are identified by first fully reconstructing a $B^{+}$ decay in one of many possible exclusive decays to hadronic final states, then examining detector activity that is not associated with this reconstructed $B^{+}$ decay for evidence of a signal $B^{-}\to \hat{I}›\overline{p}\hat{I}½\overline{\hat{I}}½$ decay. The data yield is found to be consistent with the expected background contribution under a null signal hypothesis, resulting in an upper limit of $\mathcal{B}(B^{-}\to \hat{I}›\overline{p}\hat{I}½\overline{\hat{I}}½)<3.0\times 10^{-5}$ at the $90\%$ confidence level.

10 pages, 7 figures