Branching Fractions of the $X(3872)$

Abstract

The recoil momentum spectrum from the decay $B^+ \to K^+ +\mathrm{anything}$ has recently been measured by the BaBar collaboration. The spectrum has a peak with invariant mass near the mass of the $X(3872)$ meson. The preliminary measurement by the BaBar collaboration implies that its branching fraction into $J/\psi\, \pi^+\pi^-$ is about 4\%. We emphasize that this is the branching fraction for the entire resonance feature from $B^+$-to-$K^+$ transitions, which includes a $D^{*0} \bar D^0$ and $D^0 \bar D^{*0}$ threshold enhancement as well as a possible bound state below the threshold or a virtual state. If the $X$ is a bound state of charm mesons, its branching fraction into $J/\psi\, \pi^+\pi^-$ should be considerably larger than that of the $X$ resonance feature. We use measurements of branching ratios of the $X$ to put an upper bound on this branching fraction of 33\%. We also constrain the parameters of the simplest plausible model for the line shapes of the $X$ using the precise measurement of the resonance energy of the $X$ and an estimate of the branching fraction into $D^0 \bar D^0 \pi^0$ and $D^0 \bar D^0\gamma$ from the $X$ resonance feature from $B^+$-to-$K^+$ transitions.