Measurement of CP-Violating Asymmetries In Neutral B Meson Decays Into Three Kaons

Abstract

The Standard Model (SM) of particle physics successfully describes all of the observed interactions of the fundamental particles (with the exception of non-zero neutrino mass). Despite this enormous success, the SM is widely viewed as an incomplete theory. For example, the size of the asymmetry between matter and antimatter is not nearly large enough to account for the abundance of matter observed throughout the universe. It is thus believed that as-yet-unknown physical phenomena must exist that introduce new asymmetries between matter and antimatter. In this thesis, by studying decays that happen only rarely in the SM, we make measurements of asymmetries between matter and antimatter that are potentially sensitive to the existence of processes beyond the SM.At the PEP-II asymmetric-energy B Factory at SLAC, electrons and positrons are collided at the Υ (4S) resonance to create pairs of B mesons. The BABAR detector is used to measure the subsequent decay products. Using 383 million Υ (4S) → BB decays, we study the decay Data samples reconstructed from three K 0 modes (Kand K −0.031 rad, excluding the possibility that β eff = 0 at 5.1σ. We use the data with m K + K − < 1.1 GeV/c 2 to extract CP asymmetries separately for B 0 decays to φ(1020)K 0 and f 0 (980)K 0 , finding β eff ,φ = 0.11 ± 0.14 ± 0.06 and β eff ,f 0 = 0.14 ± 0.15 ± 0.05.vi