Measurements of Six-Body Hadronic Decays of the D^0 Charmed Meson

Abstract

Using data collected by the FOCUS experiment at Fermilab, we report the discovery of the decay modes D^0 --> K- pi+ pi+ pi+ pi- pi- and D^0 --> pi+ pi+ pi+ pi- pi- pi-. With a sample of 48 +/- 10 reconstructed D^0 --> K- pi+ pi+ pi+ pi- pi- decays and 149 +/- 17 reconstructed D^0 --> pi+ pi+ pi+ pi- pi- pi- decays, we measure the following relative branching ratios: ${Γ(D^0 \to K^- π^+ π^+ π^+ π^- π^-) / Γ(D^0 \to K^- π^+ π^+ π^-)} = (2.70 \pm 0.58 \pm 0.38) \times 10^{-3}$ ${Γ(D^0 \to π^+ π^+ π^+ π^- π^- π^-) / Γ(D^0 \to K^- π^+ π^+ π^-)} = (5.23 \pm 0.59 \pm 1.35) \times 10^{-3}$ ${Γ(D^0 \to π^+ π^+ π^+ π^- π^- π^-) / Γ(D^0 \to K^- π^+ π^+ π^+ π^- π^-)} = 1.93 \pm 0.47 \pm 0.48$ The first errors are statistical and the second are systematic. The branching fraction of the Cabibbo suppressed six-body decay mode is measured to be a factor of two higher than the branching fraction of the Cabibbo favored six-body decay mode.