Improved search for $ψ(3770) \to γη_{c}(1S, 2S)$ radiative transitions

Abstract

Based on an integrated luminosity of $20.3~\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ of $e^{+}e^{-}$ annihilation data collected at a center-of-mass energy of $3.773~\rm{GeV}$ with the BESIII detector operating at the BEPCII collider, an improved search for the radiative transitions $ψ(3770) \to γη_{c}(1S, 2S)$ is performed using the hadronic decays $η_{c}(1S, 2S) \to K^{0}_{S} K^{\pm} π^{\mp}$. No significant signal is observed. The corresponding 90$\%$ confidence level upper limits on the product branching fractions are set to be $5.0 \times 10^{-6}$ for the $η_{c}(1S)$ transition and $3.7 \times 10^{-6}$ for the $η_{c}(2S)$ transition. The 90$\%$ confidence level upper limits on the partial decay widths are also reported to be $Γ(ψ(3770) \to γη_{c}(1S)) < 5.5$ keV and $Γ(ψ(3770) \to γη_{c}(2S)) < 29.4~\rm{keV}$. With about seven times larger integrated luminosity than used previously, these results lower the upper limits by approximately a factor of three and two for the $η_{c}(1S)$ and $η_{c}(2S)$ transitions, respectively.