Investigation of Semileptonic B Meson Decay to P-Wave Charm Mesons

We have studied semileptonic B meson decays with a P-wave charm meson in the final state using 3.29 × 10 BB̄ events collected by the CLEO II detector at the Cornell Electron-positron Storage Ring. We find a value for the exclusive semileptonic product branching fraction: B(B− → D 1`ν̄`)B(D 1 → Dπ) = (0.373 ± 0.085 ± 0.052 ± 0.024)% and an upper limit for B(B− → D 2 `ν̄`)B(D 2 → Dπ) < 0.16% (90% C.L.). These results indicate that at least 20% of the total B− semileptonic rate is unaccounted for by the observed exclusive decays, B− → D`ν̄, B− → D`ν̄, B− → D 1`−ν̄, and B− → D 2 `−ν̄. (Submitted to Physical Review Letters) SLAC-PUB-9836 hep-ex/9708035 Work supported in part by Department of Energy Contract DE-AC03-76SF00515 Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94309, USA A. Anastassov, J. E. Duboscq, D. Fujino, K. K. Gan, T. Hart, K. Honscheid, H. Kagan, R. Kass, J. Lee, M. B. Spencer, M. Sung, A. Undrus, R. Wanke, A. Wolf, M. M. Zoeller, B. Nemati, S. J. Richichi, W. R. Ross, P. Skubic, M. Bishai, J. Fast, J. W. Hinson, N. Menon, D. H. Miller, E. I. Shibata, I. P. J. Shipsey, M. Yurko, S. Glenn, S. D. Johnson, Y. Kwon, S. Roberts, E. H. Thorndike, C. P. Jessop, K. Lingel, H. Marsiske, M. L. Perl, V. Savinov, D. Ugolini, R. Wang, X. Zhou, T. E. Coan, V. Fadeyev, I. Korolkov, Y. Maravin, I. Narsky, V. Shelkov, J. Staeck, R. Stroynowski, I. Volobouev, J. Ye, M. Artuso, A. Efimov, M. Goldberg, D. He, S. Kopp, G. C. Moneti, R. Mountain, S. Schuh, T. Skwarnicki, S. Stone, G. Viehhauser, X. Xing, J. Bartelt, S. E. Csorna, V. Jain, K. W. McLean, S. Marka, R. Godang, K. Kinoshita, I. C. Lai, P. Pomianowski, S. Schrenk, G. Bonvicini, D. Cinabro, R. Greene, L. P. Perera, G. J. Zhou, B. Barish, M. Chadha, S. Chan, G. Eigen, J. S. Miller, C. O’Grady, M. Schmidtler, J. Urheim, A. J. Weinstein, F. Würthwein, D. W. Bliss, G. Masek, H. P. Paar, S. Prell, V. Sharma, D. M. Asner, J. Gronberg, T. S. Hill, D. J. Lange, S. Menary, R. J. Morrison, H. N. Nelson, T. K. Nelson, C. Qiao, J. D. Richman, D. Roberts, A. Ryd, M. S. Witherell, R. Balest, B. H. Behrens, W. T. Ford, H. Park, J. Roy, J. G. Smith, J. P. Alexander, C. Bebek, B. E. Berger, K. Berkelman, K. Bloom, D. G. Cassel, H. A. Cho, D. S. Crowcroft, M. Dickson, P. S. Drell, K. M. Ecklund, R. Ehrlich, A. D. Foland, P. Gaidarev, L. Gibbons, B. Gittelman, S. W. Gray, D. L. Hartill, B. K. Heltsley, P. I. Hopman, S. L. Jones, J. Kandaswamy, P. C. Kim, D. L. Kreinick, T. Lee, Y. Liu, N. B. Mistry, C. R. Ng, E. Nordberg, M. Ogg, J. R. Patterson, D. Peterson, D. Riley, A. Soffer, B. Valant-Spaight, C. Ward, M. Athanas, P. Avery, C. D. Jones, M. Lohner, C. Prescott, J. Yelton, J. Zheng, G. Brandenburg, R. A. Briere, A. Ershov, Y. S. Gao, D. Y.-J. Kim, R. Wilson, H. Yamamoto, aPermanent address: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94551. bPermanent address: BINP, RU-630090 Novosibirsk, Russia. cPermanent address: Yonsei University, Seoul 120-749, Korea. dPermanent address: Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973. ePermanent address: University of Texas, Austin TX 78712