Measurement of the B0 --> pi- l+ nu and B+ --> pi0 l+ nu Branching Fractions and Determination of |V_ub| in Y(4S) Events Tagged by a Fully Reconstructed B Meson

Abstract

We report preliminary measurements of the charmless exclusive semileptonic branching fractions of the B0 --> pi- l+ nu and B+ --> pi0 l+ nu decays, based on 211 fb-1 of data collected at the Y(4S) resonance by the BABAR detector. In events in which the decay of one B meson to a hadronic final state is fully reconstructed, the semileptonic decay of the second B meson is identified by the detection of a charged lepton and a pion. We measure the partial branching fractions for B0 --> pi- l+ nu and B+ --> pi0 l+ nu in three regions of the invariant mass squared of the lepton pair, and we obtain the total branching fractions BF(B0 --> pi- l+ nu) = (1.14 +/- 0.27(stat) +/- 0.17(syst)) x 10^-4 and BF(B+ --> pi0 l+ nu) = (0.86 +/- 0.22(stat) +/- 0.11(syst)) x 10^-4. Using isospin symmetry, we measure the combined total branching fraction BF(B0 --> pi- l+ nu) = (1.28 +/- 0.23(stat) +/- 0.16(syst)) x 10^-4. Theoretical predictions of the form-factor are used to determine the magnitude of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix element |V_ub| = (3.7 +/- 0.3(stat) +/- 0.2(syst) +0.8-0.5(FF)) x 10^-3, where the last error is due to the form-factor normalization.