Simultaneous measurement of the B-0 meson lifetime and mixing frequency with B-0 -> D(*-)l(+)v(l) decays

Abstract

We measure the B0 lifetime τB0 and the B0-B0 oscillation frequency Δmd with a sample of approximately 14000 exclusively reconstructed B0→D*-l+νl signal events, selected from 23 million BB̅ pairs recorded at the Υ(4S) resonance with the BABAR detector at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. The decay position of the other B is determined with the remaining tracks in the event, and its b-quark flavor at the time of decay is determined with a tagging algorithm that exploits the correlation between the flavor of the b quark and the charges of its decay products. The lifetime and oscillation frequencies are measured simultaneously with an unbinned maximum-likelihood fit that uses, for each event, the measured difference in decay times of the two B mesons (Δt), the calculated uncertainty on Δt, the signal and background probabilities, and b-quark tagging information for the other B. The results are τB0=(1.523-0.023+0.024±0.022)ps and Δmd=(0.492±0.018±0.013)ps-1. The statistical correlation coefficient between τB0 and Δmd is -0.22.