0000000000519793
AUTHOR
Francesco Forti
Searches for rare or forbidden semileptonic charm decays
We present searches for rare or forbidden charm decays of the form $X_c^+\to h^\pm\ell^\mp\ell^{(\prime)+}$, where $X_c^+$ is a charm hadron ($D^+$, $D^+_s$, or $\Lambda_c^+$), $h^\pm$ is a pion, kaon, or proton, and $\ell^{(\prime)\pm}$ is an electron or muon. The analysis is based on $384 fb^{-1}$ of $e^+e^-$ annihilation data collected at or close to the $\Upsilon(4S)$ resonance with the BaBar detector at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. No significant signal is observed for any of the 35 decay modes that are investigated. We establish 90% confidence-level upper limits on the branching fractions between $1 \times 10^{-6}$ and $44 \times 10^{-6}$ depending on the channel. In most…
Improved limits on the lepton-flavor violating decays tau(-) -> l(-)l(+)l(-)
A search for the neutrinoless, lepton-flavor violating decay of the tau lepton into three charged leptons has been performed using 376fb-1 of data collected at an e+e- center-of-mass energy around 10.58 GeV with the BABAR detector at the SLAC PEP-II storage rings. In all six decay modes considered, the numbers of events found in data are compatible with the background expectations. Upper limits on the branching fractions are set in the range (4-8)×10-8 at 90% confidence level. © 2007 The American Physical Society.
Study of radiative bottomonium transitions using converted photons
We use 111+/-1 million Upsilon(3S) and 89+/-1 million Upsilon(2S) events recorded by the BaBar detector at the PEP-II B-factory at SLAC to perform a study of radiative transitions between bottomonium states using photons that have been converted to e+e- pairs by the detector material. We observe Upsilon(3S) -> gamma chi_b0,2(1P) decay, make precise measurements of the branching fractions for chi_b1,2(1P,2P) -> gamma Upsilon(1S) and chi_b1,2(2P) -> gamma Upsilon(2S) decays, and search for radiative decay to the eta_b(1S) and eta_b(2S) states.
Search for Low-Mass Dark-Sector Higgs Bosons
See paper for full list of authors - 7 pages, 5 postscript figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett; Recent astrophysical and terrestrial experiments have motivated the proposal of a dark sector with GeV-scale gauge boson force carriers and new Higgs bosons. We present a search for a dark Higgs boson using 516 fb-1 of data collected with the BABAR detector. We do not observe a significant signal and we set 90% confidence level upper limits on the product of the Standard Model-dark sector mixing angle and the dark sector coupling constant.
Measurement of the semileptonic branching fraction of the B_{s} meson
We report a measurement of the inclusive semileptonic branching fraction of the B_s meson using data collected with the BaBar detector in the center-of-mass (CM) energy region above the Upsilon(4S) resonance. We use the inclusive yield of phi mesons and the phi yield in association with a high-momentum lepton to perform a simultaneous measurement of the semileptonic branching fraction and the production rate of B_s mesons relative to all B mesons as a function of CM energy. The inclusive semileptonic branching fraction of the B_s meson is determined to be B(B_s to l nu X)=9.5 (+2.5/-2.0)(stat)(+1.1/-1.9)(syst)%, where l indicates the average of e and mu.
Searches for B0 decays to combinations of charmless isoscalar mesons
We search for B meson decays into two-body combinations of eta, eta', omega, and phi mesons from 89 million B B-bar pairs collected with the BaBar detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy e+e- collider at SLAC. We find the branching fraction BF(B0 -> eta omega) = (4.0^{+1.3}_{-1.2} +- 0.4) x 10^-6 with a significance of 4.3 sigma. For all the other decay modes we set the following 90% confidence level upper limits on the branching fractions, in units of 10^-6 : BF(B0 -> eta eta)<2.8, BF(B0 -> eta eta')<4.6, BF(B0 -> eta' eta')<10, BF(B0 -> eta'omega)<2.8, BF(B0 -> eta phi)<1.0, BF(B0 -> eta' phi)<4.5, BF(B0 -> phi phi)<1.5.