Search for the pentaquark via the [formula omitted] decay

• Published in: Physics letters. B Vol. 448; no. 3; pp. 303 - 310
• Main Authors: Aitala, E.M., Amato, S., Anjos, J.C., Appel, J.A., Ashery, D., Banerjee, S., Bediaga, I., Blaylock, G., Bracker, S.B., Burchat, P.R., Burnstein, R.A., Carter, T., Carvalho, H.S., Copty, N.K., Cremaldi, L.M., Darling, C., Denisenko, K., Fernandez, A., Fox, G.F., Gagnon, P., Gerzon, S., Gobel, C., Gounder, K., Halling, A.M., Herrera, G., Hurvits, G., James, C., Kasper, P.A., Kwan, S., Langs, D.C., Leslie, J., Lichtenstadt, J., Lundberg, B., MayTal-Beck, S., Meadows, B.T., de Mello Neto, J.R.T., Mihalcea, D., Milburn, R.H., de Miranda, J.M., Napier, A., Nguyen, A., d'Oliveira, A.B., O'Shaughnessy, K., Peng, K.C., Perera, L.P., Purohit, M.V., Quinn, B., Radeztsky, S., Rafatian, A., Reay, N.W., Reidy, J.J., dos Reis, A.C., Rubin, H.A., Sanders, D.A., Santha, A.K.S., Santoro, A.F.S., Schwartz, A.J., Sheaff, M., Sidwell, R.A., Slaughter, A.J., Sokoloff, M.D., Solano, J., Stanton, N.R., Stefanski, R.J., Stenson, K., Summers, D.J., Takach, S., Thorne, K., Tripathi, A.K., Watanabe, S., Weiss-Babai, R., Wiener, J., Witchey, N., Wolin, E., Yang, S.M., Yi, D., Yoshida, S., Zaliznyak, R., Zhang, C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01-02-1999
• ISSN: 0370-2693; 1873-2445
• DOI: 10.1016/S0370-2693(99)00058-1

We have searched for evidence of the production and decay of a neutral bound-state pentaquark, one of a predicted doublet of states:
P
0
c
̄
s
=|
c
̄
suud〉
and
P
−
c
̄
s
=|
c
̄
sddu〉
. Specifically, we have searched for the decay
P
0
c
̄
s
→K
∗0K
−p
in data from Fermilab experiment E791, in which a 500 GeV/
c
π
− beam interacted with nuclear targets. We find mass-dependent upper limits at the 90% confidence level for the ratio of cross section times branching fraction of this decay relative to that for the decay
D
s
−→K
∗0K
−
. The upper limits vary between 0.016 and 0.036 for
M(P
0
c
̄
s
)
between 2.75 and 2.91 GeV/
c
2, assuming a pentaquark lifetime of 0.4 ps.