Evidence for the Flavor Changing Neutral Current Decays B to K l+ l- and B to K* l+ l-

Abstract

We present preliminary results from a search for the rare, flavor-changing neutral current decays B to K l+ l- and B to K* l+ l-, where l+ l- is either an e+ e- or mu+ mu- pair. The data sample comprises (84.4 +- 0.9) X 10e6 upsilon(4S) to B B-bar decays (77.8 /fb) collected with the BaBar detector at the PEP-II B factory. For B to K l+ l-, we observe a signal with estimated significance of 4.4 sigma and obtain B(B to K l+ l-) = (0.78 +0.24 -0.20 +0.11 -0.18) X 10e-6 (averaged over l = e and mu). For B to K* l+ l-, we observe an excess of events over background with estimated significance of 2.8 sigma. We obtain B(B to K* l+ l-) = (1.68 +0.68 -0.58 +-0.28) X 10e-6 and the 90% C.L. upper limit B(B to K* l+ l-) < 3.0 X 10e-6.