Investigation of the decay of orbitally-excited B mesons and first measurement of the branching ratio BR(BJ*→B*π(X))

Abstract

From about 4 million hadronic Z0 decays recorded by the OPAL detector on and near to the Z0 resonance, we select a sample of more than 570 000 inclusively reconstructed B mesons. Orbitally-excited mesons B J* are reconstructed using Bπ± combinations. Independently, B* mesons are reconstructed using the decay B* → Bγ. The selected B* candidates are used to obtain samples enriched or depleted in the decay BJ* → B*π± (X), where (X) refers to decay modes with or without additional accompanying decay particles. From the number of signal candidates in the Bπ± mass spectra of these two samples, we perform the first measurement of the branching ratio of orbitally-excited B mesons decaying into B*π(X..