Investigation of B --> D^{(*)}anti-D^{(*)}K decays with the BABAR detector

Abstract

Using about 23M $B\bar{B}$ events collected in 1999-2000 with the BABAR detector, we report the observation of several hundred $B\to D^{(\ast )}{\bar{D}}^{(\ast )}K$ decays with two completely reconstructed D mesons. The preliminary branching fractions of the low background decay modes $B^0\to D^{\ast -}{D}^{(\ast )0}{K}^{+}$ are determined to be $\mathcal{B}(B^0\to D^{\ast -}{D}^0{K}^{+})=(2.8\pm 0.7\pm 0.5)\times 10^{-3}$ and $\mathcal{B}(B^0\to D^{\ast -}{D}^{\ast 0}{K}^{+})=(6.8\pm 1.7\pm 1.7)\times 10^{-3}$. Observation of a significant number of candidates in the color-suppressed decay mode $B^{+}\to D^{\ast +}{D}^{\ast -}{K}^{+}$ is reported with a preliminary branching fraction $\mathcal{B}(B^{+}\to D^{\ast +}{D}^{\ast -}{K}^{+})=(3.4\pm 1.6\pm 0.9)\times 10^{-3}.$

18 pages, 8 figures (15 postscript files), conference paper submitted to LP01