The branching fraction of tau --> pi- K0S K0S (pi0) nu decays

TL;DR

This study measures the branching fractions of specific tau decay modes involving K0S and pi0 particles using a large dataset, providing precise results and setting upper limits on unobserved decay channels.

Contribution

The paper provides the first precise measurements of tau decays to pi- K0S K0S (pi0) nu and sets upper limits on related K- K0S K0S (pi0) nu decays.

Findings

Measured branching fractions for tau- --> pi- K0S K0S nu and tau- --> pi- K0S K0S pi0 nu.

No evidence found for tau- --> K- K0S K0S nu and tau- --> K- K0S K0S pi0 nu decays.

Placed upper limits on the branching fractions of unobserved decay modes.

Abstract

We present a study of tau- --> pi- K0S K0S (pi0) nu and tau- --> K- K0S K0S (pi0) nu decays using a dataset of 430 million tau lepton pairs, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 468 fb-1, collected with the BaBar detector at the PEP-II asymmetric energy e+e- storage rings. We measure branching fractions of (2.31 +/- 0.04 +/- 0.08)x10^{-4} and (1.60 +/- 0.20 +/- 0.22)x10^{-5} for the tau- --> pi- K0S K0S nu and tau- --> pi- K0S K0S pi0 nu decays, respectively. We find no evidence for tau- --> K- K0S K0S nu and tau- --> K- K0S K0S pi0 nu decays and place upper limits on the branching fractions of 6.3 x 10^{-7) and 4.0 x 10^{-7} at the 90% confidence level.