Study of inclusive D_S^((*)+/-) production in B decays and measurement of B^0 --> D^(*-)D_S^((*)+) decays using a partial reconstruction technique

TL;DR

This paper investigates B meson decays to D_S mesons using data from the BABAR detector, measuring production rates, spectra, and branching fractions with a novel partial reconstruction method.

Contribution

It introduces a partial reconstruction technique to measure B decay modes involving D_S mesons and provides new measurements of their production and decay rates.

Findings

Measured inclusive D_S production fractions and spectra.

Observed B^0 --> D^(*)- D_S^(*)+ decays with partial reconstruction.

Estimated branching fractions for these decay modes.

Abstract

Electron-positron annihilation data collected by the BABAR detector near the Y(4S) resonance are used to study the inclusive decay of B mesons to D_S^(+/-) and D_S^(*+/-) mesons, where the D_S^(+/-) is reconstructed using the decay D_S^(+/-) --> phi pi^(+/-). The production fraction of inclusive D_S^((*)+/-) and the corresponding momentum spectra have been determined. The exclusive decays B^0 --> D^(*-)D_S^((*)+) are observed with a partial reconstruction technique which uses the soft pion from the D^(*+/-) decay in association with the reconstructed D_S^((*)+/-). The beam energy constraint is used to determine the missing mass recoiling against the D_S^(+/-) system, showing a clear signal for this process. From the observed rates, preliminary results for the corresponding branching fractions have been obtained.