First Observation of Cabibbo-Suppressed \Xi_c^0 Decays

TL;DR

This paper reports the first observation of Cabibbo-suppressed decay modes of the ^0 baryon, measuring their branching ratios relative to a known decay, using data from the Belle detector at KEKB.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental evidence of specific Cabibbo-suppressed ^0 decay channels and measures their branching ratios relative to a common reference decay.

Findings

First observation of these decay modes.

Measured branching ratio ratios with statistical and systematic uncertainties.

Results consistent with theoretical expectations.

Abstract

We report the first observation of the Cabibbo-suppressed decays $\Xi_c^0\rightarrow \Xi^- K^+$, $\Xi_c^0\ra\Lambda K^+ K^-$ and $\Xi_c^0\rightarrow \Lambda \phi$, using a data sample of $711\, \mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ collected at the $\Upsilon(4S)$ resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy $e^+ e^-$ collider. We measure the ratios of branching fractions to be $\frac{{\cal B}(\Xi_c^0\ra \Xi^- K^+)}{{\cal B}(\Xi^0_c\ra\Xi^-\pi^+)}=(2.75\pm 0.51\pm 0.25)\times 10^{-2}$, $\frac{{\cal B}(\Xi_c^0\ra\Lambda K^+ K^-)}{{\cal B}(\Xi_c^0\rightarrow\Xi^- \pi^+)}=(2.86\pm 0.61\pm 0.24)\times 10^{-2}$ and $\frac{{\cal B}(\Xi_c^0\ra \Lambda\phi)}{{\cal B}(\Xi^0_c\ra\Xi^-\pi^+)}=(3.43\pm 0.58\pm 0.32)\times 10^{-2}$, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic.