Searches for the rare hadronic decays $B^0\to p\bar{p}p\bar{p}$ and $B_s^0\to p\bar{p}p\bar{p}$

Abstract

Searches for the rare hadronic decays $B^0\to p\bar{p}p\bar{p}$ and $B_s^0\to p\bar{p}p\bar{p}$ are performed using proton-proton collision data recorded by the LHCb experiment and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9${\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$. Significances of $9.3\sigma$ and $4.0\sigma$, including statistical and systematic uncertainties, are obtained for the $B^0\to p\bar{p}p\bar{p}$ and $B_s^0\to p\bar{p}p\bar{p}$ signals, respectively. The branching fractions are measured relative to the topologically similar normalisation decays $B^0\to J/\psi (\to p\bar{p})K^{\ast 0}(\to K^{+}{\pi }^{-})$ and $B_s^0\to J/\psi (\to p\bar{p})\varphi (\to K^{+}{K}^{-})$. The branching fractions are measured to be $\mathcal{B}(B^0\to p\bar{p}p\bar{p})=(2.2\pm 0.4\pm 0.1\pm 0.1)\times 10^{-8}$ and $\mathcal{B}(B_s^0\to p\bar{p}p\bar{p})=(2.3\pm 1.0\pm 0.2\pm 0.1)\times 10^{-8}$. In these measurements, the first uncertainty is statistical, the second is systematic and the third one is due to the external branching fraction of the normalisation channel.

arXiv commentAll figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-032.html (LHCb public pages)