- Open Access
Search for Decays at the Belle II Experiment
Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 151801 – Published 6 October, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/v1q3-9dy8
Abstract
We present a search for the rare flavor-changing neutral-current decay with data collected by the Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB electron-positron collider. The analysis uses a data sample recorded at the center-of-mass energy of the resonance. One of the mesons produced in the process is fully reconstructed in a hadronic decay mode, while its companion meson is required to decay into a and two leptons of opposite charge. The leptons are reconstructed in final states with a single electron, muon, charged pion or charged meson, and additional neutrinos. We set an upper limit on the branching fraction of at the 90% confidence level, which is the most stringent constraint reported to date.
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Article Text
Supplemental Material
References (38)
Henceforth, indicates the state.
- J. L. Hewett, Phys. Rev. D 53, 4964 (1996).
- B. Capdevila, A. Crivellin, S. Descotes-Genon, L. Hofer, and J. Matias, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 181802 (2018).
- C. Cornella, D. A. Faroughy, J. Fuentes-Martin, G. Isidori, and M. Neubert, J. High Energy Phys. 08 (2021) 050.
- I. Adachi et al. (Belle II Collaboration), Phys. Rev. D 109, 112006 (2024).
- L. Allwicher, D. Becirevic, G. Piazza, S. Rosauro-Alcaraz, and O. Sumensari, Phys. Lett. B 848, 138411 (2024).
- S. Banerjee et al. (HFLAV Collaboration), arXiv:2411.18639.
- T. V. Dong, T. Luo et al. (Belle Collaboration), Phys. Rev. D 108, L011102 (2023).
- J. P. Lees, V. Poireau, V. Tisserand et al. (BABAR Collaboration, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 031802 (2017).
- R. Aaij, B. Adeva, M. Adinolfi et al. (LHCb Collaboration), Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 251802 (2017).
Charge conjugate modes are implied throughout the text.
- T. Keck et al., Comput. Software Big Sci. 3, 6 (2019).
- K. Akai, K. Furukawa, and H. Koiso, Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res., Sect. A 907, 188 (2018).
- T. Abe (Belle II Collaboration), arXiv:1011.0352.
- D. J. Lange, Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res., Sect. A 462, 152 (2001).
- T. Sjöstrand, S. Ask, J. R. Christiansen, R. Corke, N. Desai, P. Ilten, S. Mrenna, S. Prestel, C. O. Rasmussen, and P. Z. Skands, Comput. Phys. Commun. 191, 159 (2015).
- S. Jadach, B. F. L. Ward, and Z. Wąs, Comput. Phys. Commun. 130, 260 (2000).
- S. Jadach, J. H. Kuhn, and Z. Wąs, Comput. Phys. Commun. 64, 275 (1990).
- E. Barberio and Z. Wąs, Comput. Phys. Commun. 79, 291 (1994).
- S. Agostinelli et al. (GEANT4 Collaboration), Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res., Sect. A 506, 250 (2003).
- A. Ali, P. Ball, L. T. Handoko, and G. Hiller, Phys. Rev. D 61, 074024 (2000).
- A. Natochii et al., arXiv:2203.05731.
- T. Kuhr, C. Pulvermacher, M. Ritter, T. Hauth, and N. Braun (Belle II Framework Software Group), Comput. Software Big Sci. 3, 1 (2019).
- Belle II Collaboration, Belle II Analysis Software Framework (basf2), 10.5281/zenodo.5574115 (2025).
- T. Keck, Comput. Software Big Sci. 1, 2 (2017).
- A. Hocker et al., TMVA—Toolkit for multivariate data analysis with ROOT: Users guide. TMVA—Toolkit for multivariate data analysis, Technical Report No. CERN-OPEN-2007-007, CERN, Geneva, 2007.
- Belle II Collaboration, Report No. BELLE2-NOTE-PL-2020-027, 2020.
- S. Navas et al. (Particle Data Group), Phys. Rev. D 110, 030001 (2024).
- J.-F. Krohn et al. (Belle II Analysis Software Group), Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res., Sect. A 976, 164269 (2020).
- T. Chen and C. Guestrin, in Proceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, KDD ’16 (ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2016), pp. 785–794, 10.1145/2939672.2939785.
- See Supplemental Material at http://link.aps.org/supplemental/10.1103/v1q3-9dy8 for more details on the input variables and on the BDT architecture.
- L. Heinrich, M. Feickert, and G. Stark, pyhf: v0.7.6, 2024, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10470033.
- L. Heinrich, M. Feickert, G. Stark, and K. Cranmer, J. Open Source Software 6, 2823 (2021).
- K. Cranmer and A. Held, EPJ Web Conf. 251, 03067 (2021).
- A. L. Read, J. Phys. G 28, 2693 (2002).
- G. Cowan, K. Cranmer, E. Gross, and O. Vitells, Eur. Phys. J. C 71, 1554 (2011); 73, 2501(E) (2013).
- Belle II Collaboration, HEPData record for this analysis, 10.17182/hepdata.159541 (2025).
- A. Pinto, Z. Wu, F. Balli, N. Berger, M. Boonekamp, E. Chapon, T. Kawamoto, and B. Malaescu, Eur. Phys. J. C 84, 593 (2024).