Measurement of the branching fraction, polarization, and CP asymmetries in B^0 → ρ^0ρ^0 decay, and implications for the CKM angle α

Abstract

We study B^0→ρ^0ρ^0 decays in a sample of 465×10^6 Υ(4S)→BB events collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy e^+e^- collider located at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). We measure the branching fraction B=(0.92±0.32±0.14)×10^(-6) and longitudinal polarization fraction f_L=0.75_(-0.14)^(+0.11)±0.05, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic. The evidence for the B^0→ρ^0ρ^0 signal has a significance of 3.1 standard deviations, including systematic uncertainties. We investigate the proper-time dependence of the longitudinal component in the decay and measure the CP-violating coefficients S_L^(00)=(0.3±0.7±0.2) and C_L^(00)=(0.2±0.8±0.3). We study the implication of these results for the unitarity triangle angle α.