Observation of Photon Polarization in the b → sγ Transition
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Aaij-2014-Observation of photon polarization.pdf
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Author(s)
Counts, Ian Thomas Hunt
Williams, Michael
Ilten, Philip J
Date Issued
April 2014
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Aaij, R., B. Adeva, M. Adinolfi, A. Affolder, Z. Ajaltouni, J. Albrecht, F. Alessio, et al. “Observation of Photon Polarization in the b → sγ Transition.” Physical Review Letters 112, no. 16 (April 2014). © 2014 CERN, for the LHCb Collaboration
Version
Final published version
Abstract
This Letter presents a study of the flavor-changing neutral current radiative B[superscript ±] → K[superscript ±]π[superscript ∓]π[superscript ±]γ decays performed using data collected in proton-proton collisions with the LHCb detector at 7 and 8 TeV center-of-mass energies. In this sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3 fb[superscript −1], nearly 14 000 signal events are reconstructed and selected, containing all possible intermediate resonances with a K[superscript ±]π[superscript ∓]π[superscript ±] final state in the [1.1, 1.9] GeV/c[superscript 2] mass range. The distribution of the angle of the photon direction with respect to the plane defined by the final-state hadrons in their rest frame is studied in intervals of K[superscript ±]π[superscript ∓]π[superscript ±] mass and the asymmetry between the number of signal events found on each side of the plane is obtained. The first direct observation of the photon polarization in the b → sγ transition is reported with a significance of 5.2σ.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Nuclear Science
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.161801
