Eur. Phys. J. C (2004) 35: 149-158
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s2004-01810-9

experimental physics

A study of charm and anti-charm production in beauty decays with the OPAL detector at LEP

Abstract

The branching ratio of beauty hadrons to final states containing two charm hadrons, Br(b , has been measured using an inclusive method in hadronic Z⁰ decays with the OPAL detector at LEP. The impact parameter significance of tracks opposite tagged b-jets is used to differentiate b decays from other decays. The result is where “det.” is the systematic uncertainty due to the modelling of the detector, and “” is the systematic uncertainty due to the modelling of the underlying physics. Using this result, the average number of charm plus anti-charm quarks produced in a beauty quark decay, n _c , is found to be 1.12 ^{+ 0.11} _-0.10.