Search for the highly suppressed decays B- -> K+ pi- pi- and B- -> K- K- pi+

TL;DR

This study searches for rare, highly suppressed B- meson decays into specific three-body final states, setting upper limits on their branching fractions due to the absence of observed signals.

Contribution

The paper provides the first experimental upper limits on the branching fractions of B- -> K+ pi- pi- and B- -> K- K- pi+ decays, constraining new physics models.

Findings

No evidence of the decays was observed.

Upper limits on branching fractions were set at 9.5 x 10^-7 and 1.6 x 10^-7.

Results improve constraints on rare B meson decay processes.

Abstract

We report a search for the decays B- -> K+ pi- pi- and B- -> K- K- pi+, which are highly suppressed in the Standard Model. Using a sample of (467 +/- 5) x 10^6 BBbar pairs collected with the BaBar detector, we do not see any evidence of these decays and determine 90% confidence level upper limits of BF(B- -> K+ pi- pi-) < 9.5 x 10^-7 and BF(B- -> K- K- pi+) < 1.6 x 10^-7 on the corresponding branching fractions, including systematic uncertainties.