First measurements of the absolute branching fraction of $\Lambda_{c}(2625)^{+}\to \Lambda^{+}_{c}\pi^+\pi^-$ and upper limit on $\Lambda_{c}(2595)^{+}\to \Lambda^{+}_{c}\pi^+\pi^-$

Abstract

The absolute branching fraction of the decay $\Lambda_{c}(2625)^{+}\to \Lambda^{+}_{c}\pi^+\pi^-$ is measured for the first time to be $(50.7 \pm 5.0_{\rm{stat.}} \pm 4.9_{\rm{syst.}} )\%$ with 368.48 pb$^{-1}$ of $e^+e^-$ collision data collected by the BESIII detector at the center-of-mass energies of $\sqrt{s} = 4.918$ and $4.950$ GeV. This result is lower than the naive prediction of 67\%, obtained from isospin symmetry, by more than $2\sigma$, thereby indicating that the novel mechanism referred to as the \textit{threshold effect}, proposed for the strong decays of $\Lambda_{c}(2595)^{+}$, also applies to $\Lambda_{c}(2625)^{+}$. This measurement is necessary to obtain the coupling constants for the transitions between $s$-wave and $p$-wave charmed baryons in heavy hadron chiral perturbation theory. In addition, we search for the decay $\Lambda_{c}(2595)^{+}\to \Lambda^{+}_{c}\pi^+\pi^-$. No significant signal is observed, and the upper limit on its branching fraction is determined to be 80.8\% at the 90\% confidence level.