Measurement of the Absolute Branching Fraction of D0 --> K- pi+

Abstract

We measure the absolute branching fraction for D0 --> K- pi+ using partial reconstruction of B0bar --> D^{*+} X \ell^{-} \bar{\nu}_{\ell} decays, in which only the charged lepton and the pion from the decay D^{*+} --> D0 pi^+ are used. Based on a data sample of 230 million B Bbar pairs collected at the Upsilon(4S) resonance with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy B Factory at SLAC, we obtain the absolute branching fractions of D0 --> K- pi+ = (4.007 \pm 0.037 \pm 0.072)%, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic.