Measurement of the Absolute Branching Fraction of D0 -> K- pi+

Abstract

We measure the absolute branching fraction for $D0 \to K^{-} \pi^{+}$ using partial reconstruction of $B0bar \to D^{*+} X \ell^{-} \bar{\nu}_{\ell}$ decays. Only the charged lepton and the soft pion from the decay $D^{*+} \to D^{0} \pi^{+}$ are used. Based on a data sample of 230 million BBbar pairs collected at the $\Upsilon(4S)$ resonance with the \babar detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy $B$ Factory at SLAC, we obtain ${\cal B}(\Dz \to \Km \pip) = (4.025 \pm 0.038 \pm 0.098)%$, where the first error is statistical and the second error is systematic.