No description available.

This thesis presents a search for the rare B meson decay B -> pi l⁺l⁻ (l=e or mu) using 428 fb⁻¹ of data collected at the Upsilon(4S) resonance by the BaBar detector at the PEP-II asymmetric energy e⁺e⁻ storage rings located located at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California. Four exclusive modes are studied: B⁺ -> pi+ e⁺e⁻, B⁺ -> pi⁺ mu⁺mu⁻, B0 -> pi⁰ e⁺e⁻, and B0 -> pi⁰ mu⁺mu⁻. Branching fraction upper limits at the 90% confidence level are presented for the exclusive modes B⁺ -> pi⁺ mu⁺mu⁻ and B0 -> pi0 mu⁺mu⁻, and the combined mode B -> pi mu⁺mu⁻. / text

Graduate

Decays of B mesons to three-body charmless final states probe the properties of the weak interaction through their dependence on the complex quark couplings in the CKM matrix. They also test dynamical models for hadronic B decays. Based on a sample of 772 million BB pairs collected by the Belle experiment, we present a study of direct CP violation in the decay of charged B to three charged pions. / Ph. D.

No description available.

The LHCb experiment is a single-arm forward spectrometer situated at the Large Hadron Collider, CERN. LHCb is optimised for the precision study of beauty and charm flavoured hadrons and in 2011 collected 1 fb-1 of proton- proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 7TeV. The aim of LHCb is to search for rare decays and make precise measurements of Charge-Parity (CP) violation in the beauty and charm sectors. In the Standard Model the decay B°→ ΦK*(892)° is described by a loop mediated process, providing a sensitive test for new physics. In this decay, signs of CP violation could indicate the presence of physics beyond the Standard Model. This thesis presents a study of the flavour eigenstate B° → Φ(→ K+K-)K*(892)°(→ K+π-) and its charge conjugate -B°-decay. The decay products form an admixture of CP-even and CP-odd eigenstates, which can have longitudinal or transverse polarisation. An angular analysis is performed to disentangle these different contributions and the polarisation amplitudes and strong phases are measured. No difference is observed between B0 and -B0 amplitudes, supporting the hypothesis that CP is conserved in this decay. In addition, the Triple Product Asymmetries (TPAs) are determined from the products of the polarisation amplitudes and strong phases. True TPAs are zero in the event that CP symmetry is conserved, while fake TPAs can arise due to final-state interactions. Although the measured true TPAs are consistent with zero, several significant fake TPAs are observed.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis presents measurements of the branching fractions of the charmless baryonic decays B(s) → p anti-p h+ h'-, where h(') denotes a kaon or a pion. Three new modes (B → p anti-p pi+ pi-, Bs → p anti-p K+ K- and Bs → p anti-p K+(-) pi-(+)) are observed for the first time and evidence is found for a fourth (B → p anti-p K+ K-). The inclusive branching fraction of B → p anti-p K+(-) pi-(+) is measured for the first time and the upper limit is set on the branching fraction of the Bs → p anti-p pi+ pi- decay. This represents the first observation of four-body charmless baryonic decays of a Bs meson and one of the first observations of baryonic Bs decays. The implementation of the real-time alignment of LHCb's vertex detector is also described. The novel real-time alignment and calibration strategy adopted by LHCb is essential to allow more stable data taking conditions and an optimal 'offline-quality' reconstruction to be performed at the trigger level, ensuring more efficient trigger selections and the possibility to perform physics analyses directly on the trigger output.

In this thesis, novel corrections to B → X˦ and B → Xl+l- decays, where X is a pseudoscalar or vector meson, are presented. These are the chromomagnetic matrix element, weak annihilation in a general four-quark operator basis and a long-distance charm loop contribution. The calculation of the chromomagnetic matrix element completes the calculation of matrix elements for all relevant effective weak operators in B → V decays, removing an infrared divergence which previous computations had treated in a very approximate way. It also encounters an interesting technical obstacle not previously seen in sum rule calculations, which is likely to be encountered regularly in future once higher order loop diagrams are calculated. The potential for this term to contribute to the CP asymmetry in D → V˦ in the presence of new physics is discussed. The improved computation of weak annihilation diagrams is applied to the analysis of isospin asymmetries in radiative and semi-leptonic B → (p;K(*)) decays, and the computation of long distance charm bubble terms is applied to produce an improved prediction for time-dependent CP asymmetries in various B → V decays.