Measurement of the B^0-anti-B^0 oscillation frequency in hadronic B^0 Decays

TL;DR

This paper measures the B^0-anti-B^0 oscillation frequency using data from the BABAR detector, providing a precise value that enhances understanding of B meson mixing phenomena.

Contribution

The study presents a new measurement of the B^0-anti-B^0 oscillation frequency using a large dataset and advanced tagging techniques, improving precision over previous results.

Findings

Oscillation frequency Delta_md = 0.519 +/- 0.020 +/- 0.016 ps^{-1}

First measurement using hadronic B^0 decays in this dataset

Demonstrates effective flavor tagging and time-dependent analysis

Abstract

B^0-anti-B^0 flavor oscillations have been studied in 20.7 fb-1 of e^+e^- annihilation data collected in 1999 and 2000 with the BABAR detector at center-of-mass energies near the Upsilon(4S) resonance. The event sample consists of one B^0 meson fully reconstructed in a hadronic decay mode, while the flavor of the recoiling B^0 in the event is determined with a tagging algorithm that exploits the correlation between the flavor of the heavy quark and the charges of its decay products. By fitting the time development of the observed mixed and unmixed final states, the B^0-anti-B^0 oscillation frequency, Delta_md, is determined to be 0.519+/- 0.020+/- 0.016 ps^{-1}.