Constraints on the photon polarisation in b → sγ transitions using B s 0 → ϕe+e− decays

Abstract

An angular analysis of the B s 0 → ϕe+e− decay is performed using the proton-proton collision dataset collected between 2011 and 2018 by the LHCb experiment, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9 fb−1 at centre-of-mass energies of 7, 8 and 13 TeV. The analysis is performed in the very low dielectron invariant mass-squared region between 0.0009 and 0.2615 GeV2/c4. The longitudinal polarisation fraction of the ϕ meson is measured to be less than 11.5% at 90% confidence level. The A T R eCP observable, which is related to the lepton forward-backward asymmetry, is measured to be 0.116 ± 0.155 ± 0.006, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic. The transverse asymmetries, A T 2 and A T I mCP , which are sensitive to the virtual photon polarisation, are found to be −0.045 ± 0.235 ± 0.014 and 0.002 ± 0.247 ± 0.016, respectively. The results are consistent with Standard Model predictions.