Observation of photon polarization in the $b \to s\gamma$ transition
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R. Aaij
- Function : Author
J. He
- Function : Author
- PersonId : 756138
- ORCID : 0000-0001-8179-417X
L. del Buono
- Function : Author
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- IdHAL : luigi-del-buono
- IdRef : 253135834
A. Martens
- Function : Author
- PersonId : 738690
- IdHAL : aurelien-martens
Ziad Zj Ajaltouni
- Function : Author
- PersonId : 903794
E. Cogneras
- Function : Author
- PersonId : 743220
- IdHAL : eric-cogneras
- ORCID : 0000-0002-8933-9427
O. Deschamps
- Function : Author
- PersonId : 12089
- IdHAL : olivier-deschamps
- ORCID : 0000-0002-7047-6042
- IdRef : 161447368
Pierre Henrard
- Function : Author
- PersonId : 829303
M. Hoballah
- Function : Author
- PersonId : 1174785
- IdHAL : mostafa-adam-hoballah-hobart
Pascal Perret
- Function : Author
- PersonId : 739797
- IdHAL : pascal-perret
- ORCID : 0000-0002-5732-4343
Diego Alejandro Roa Romero
- Function : Author
- PersonId : 769524
- IdRef : 172096839
S. t'Jampens
- Function : Author
- PersonId : 736045
- IdHAL : stephane-tjampens
- ORCID : 0000-0003-4249-6641
J. Cogan
- Function : Author
- PersonId : 750510
- IdHAL : julien-cogan
- ORCID : 0000-0001-7194-7566
- IdRef : 078779014
O. Leroy
- Function : Author
- PersonId : 171866
- IdHAL : olivier-leroy
- ORCID : 0000-0002-2589-240X
- IdRef : 169871835
M. Perrin-Terrin
- Function : Author
- PersonId : 741779
- IdHAL : perrin-terrin
- ORCID : 0000-0002-3568-1956
- IdRef : 179269666
J. Serrano
- Function : Author
- PersonId : 175327
- IdHAL : justine-serrano
- ORCID : 0000-0003-2489-7812
- IdRef : 127525521
Abstract
This Letter presents a study of the flavor-changing neutral current radiative $B^{\pm} \to K^{\pm}\pi^{\mp}\pi^{\pm}\gamma$ 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 $3\,\text{fb}^{-1}$, nearly $14\,000$ signal events are reconstructed and selected, containing all possible intermediate resonances with a $K^{\pm}\pi^{\mp}\pi^{\pm}$ final state in the $[1.1, 1.9]\,$GeV/$c^{2}$ 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 $K^{\pm}\pi^{\mp}\pi^{\pm}$ 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 $b \to s\gamma$ transition is reported with a significance of $5.2\,\sigma$.