Lifetime and production rate of beauty baryons from Z decays

The production and decay of beauty baryons (b-baryons) have been studied using 1.7 \times 10^6 Z hadronic decays collected by the DELPHI detector at LEP. Three different techniques were used to identify the b-baryons. The first method used pairs of a \Lambda and a lepton to tag the b-baryon decay. The second method associated fully reconstructed \Lambda_c baryons with leptons. The third analysis reconstructed the b-baryon decay points by forming secondary vertices from identified protons and muons of opposite sign. Using these methods the following production rates were measured: \begin{eqnarray*} f(\qb \ra \Bb) \times \BR(\Bb \ra \mLs \ell\bar{\nu}_{\ell}\X) & = & (0.30 \pm 0.06 \pm0.04)\%…