Search for W Boson Decays to Three Charged Pions

Authors

A. M. Sirunyan, CMS Collaboration

Date of this Version

4-18-2019

Citation

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 122, 151802 (2019). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.151802

Comments

Used by permission.

Abstract

For the first time, a search for the rare decay of the W boson to three charged pions has been performed. Proton-proton collision data recorded by the CMS experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 77.3 fb⁻¹, have been analyzed. No significant excess is observed above the background expectation. An upper limit of 1.01 × 10⁻⁶ is set at 95% confidence level on the branching fraction of the W boson to three charged pions. This provides a strong motivation for theoretical calculations of this branching fraction.