Observation of a significant excess of pi0pi0 events in B meson decays

Phys Rev Lett. 2003 Dec 12;91(24):241801. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.241801. Epub 2003 Dec 11.

Abstract

We present a study of the decay B0-->pi(0)pi(0) based on a sample of 124 x 10(6) BB pairs recorded by the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy B Factory at SLAC. We observe 46+/-13+/-3 events, where the first error is statistical and the second is systematic, corresponding to a significance of 4.2 standard deviations including systematic uncertainties. We measure the branching fraction B(B0-->pi(0)pi(0))=(2.1+/-0.6+/-0.3)x10(-6), averaged over B0 and B(0) decays.