A measurement of the $CP$ asymmetry difference in $\varLambda_{c}^{+} \to pK^{-}K^{+}$ and $p\pi^{-}\pi^{+}$ decays

Abstract

The difference between the $CP$ asymmetries in the decays $\varLambda_{c}^{+} \to pK^{-}K^{+}$ and $\varLambda_{c}^{+} \to p\pi^{-}\pi^{+}$ is presented. Proton-proton collision data taken at centre-of-mass energies of $7$ and $8\,\mathrm{TeV}$ collected by the LHCb detector in 2011 and 2012 are used, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $3\,\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$. The $\varLambda_{c}^{+}$ candidates are reconstructed as part of the $\varLambda_{b}^{0} \to \varLambda_{c}^{+}\mu^{-}X$ decay chain. In order to maximize the cancellation of production and detection asymmetries in the difference, the final-state kinematic distributions of the two samples are aligned by applying phase-space-dependent weights to the $\varLambda_{c}^{+} \to p\pi^{-}\pi^{+}$ sample. This alters the definition of the integrated $CP$ asymmetry to $A_{CP}^{\text{wgt}}(p\pi^{-}\pi^{+})$. Both samples are corrected for reconstruction and selection efficiencies across the five-dimensional $\varLambda_{c}^{+}$ decay phase space. The difference in $CP$ asymmetries is found to be \begin{align*} \Delta{A^{\text{wgt}}_{CP}} &= A_{CP}(pK^{-}K^{+}) - A_{CP}^{\text{wgt}}(p\pi^{-}\pi^{+})\\ &= (0.30 \pm 0.91 \pm 0.61)\,\%, \end{align*} where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic.