Model-independent study of structure in $B^{+}\to D^{+}{D}^{-}{K}^{+}$ decays

Abstract

The only anticipated resonant contributions to $B^{+}\to D^{+}{D}^{-}{K}^{+}$ decays are charmonium states in the $D^{+}{D}^{-}$ channel. A model-independent analysis, using LHCb proton-proton collision data taken at centre-of-mass energies of $\sqrt{s}=7,8,$ and $13$ TeV, corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of 9 fb${}^{-1}$, is carried out to test this hypothesis. The description of the data assuming that resonances only manifest in decays to the $D^{+}{D}^{-}$ pair is shown to be incomplete. This constitutes evidence for a new contribution to the decay, potentially one or more new charm-strange resonances in the $D^{-}{K}^{+}$ channel with masses around 2.9 GeV$/c^2$.

All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2020-024.html (LHCb public pages). v2 adds arXiv identifier for simultaneously-submitted LHCb-PAPER-2020-025. v3 matches published version