Study of tau Decays to Four-Hadron Final States with Kaons

TL;DR

This paper reports the first significant measurements of certain tau decay modes involving four hadrons with kaons, including the first observation of tau- -> K- omega nu, using data from the CLEO III detector.

Contribution

It provides the first statistically significant measurements and the first observation of specific tau decay channels involving four hadrons with kaons.

Findings

Measured branching fractions for tau decays to K- pi+ pi- pi0 nu and K- K+ pi- pi0 nu.

First observation of tau- -> K- omega nu decay.

Established upper limits for tau- -> K- K+ K- pi0 nu decay.

Abstract

The tau decays to four hadrons have been studied with the CLEO III detector at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR) using (7.56 +- 0.15) fb^{-1} of data collected near the Y(4S) resonance. We present the first statistically significant measurements of B(tau- -> K- pi+pi- pi0 nu, excluding K^0) = (7.4 +- 0.8 +- 1.1) x 10^{-4} and B(tau--> K- K+ pi- pi0 nu) = (5.5 +- 1.4 +- 1.2) x 10^{-5}, including the first observation of the decay, tau- -> K- omega nu, with branching fraction (4.1 +- 0.6 +- 0.7) x 10^{-4}. We also publish the first upper limit for B(tau- -> K- K+ K- pi0 nu) < 4.8 (6.1) x 10^{-6} at 90% (95%) confidence level (C.L.).