Search for Exclusive Charmless Hadronic B Decays

Abstract

We have searched for two-body charmless hadronic decays of $B$ mesons. Final states include $ππ$, $K π$, and $KK$ with both charged and neutral kaons and pions; $πρ$, $K ρ$, and $K^*π$; and $Kϕ$, $ K^*ϕ$, and $ϕϕ$. The data used in this analysis consist of 2.6~million $B\bar{B}$~pairs produced at the $Υ(4S)$ taken with the CLEO-II detector at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR). We measure the branching fraction of the sum of $B^0 \rightarrow π^+π^-$ and $B^0 \rightarrow K^+π^-$ to be $(1.8^{+0.6+0.2}_{-0.5-0.3}\pm0.2) \times 10^{-5}$. In addition, we place upper limits on individual branching fractions in the range from $10^{-4}$ to $10^{-6}$.