Measurement of Branching Fractions and Search for CP-Violating Charge Asymmetries in Charmless Two-Body B Decays into Pions and Kaons

TL;DR

This paper reports measurements of branching fractions and searches for CP violation in charmless two-body B meson decays into pions and kaons, using data from the BABAR experiment, with results consistent with no CP violation.

Contribution

First precise measurements of branching fractions and CP asymmetries in specific charmless B decays using a large data sample from BABAR.

Findings

Measured branching fractions for several B decay modes.

Set upper limits on rare decay modes.

Found CP asymmetries consistent with zero.

Abstract

We present measurements of the branching fractions and a search for CP-violating charge asymmetries in charmless hadronic decays of B mesons into two-body final states of kaons and pions. The results are based on a data sample of approximately 23 million BB(bar) pairs collected by the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric B Factory at SLAC. We find the following branching fractions: BF(B0-->pi+pi-)= (4.1+/-1.0+/-0.7) x 10^{-6}, BF(B0-->K+pi-)=(16.7+/-1.6+/-1.3) x 10^{-6}, BF(B+-->K+pi0)=(10.8^{+2.1}_{-1.9}+/-1.0) x 10^{-6}, BF(B+-->K0pi+)=(18.2^{+3.3}_{-3.0}+/-2.0) x 10^{-6}, BF(B0-->K0pi0)=(8.2^{+3.1}_{-2.7}+/-1.2) x 10^{-6}. We also report the 90% confidence level upper limits BF(B0-->K+K-) < 2.5 x 10^{-6}, BF(B+-->pi+pi0) < 9.6 x 10^{-6}, and BF(B+-->anti-K0K+) < 2.4 x 10^{-6}. In addition, charge asymmetries have been measured and found to be consistent with zero, where the statistical precision is in the range of +/-0.10 to +/-0.18, depending on the decay mode.