Probing Intrinsic Charm with Semileptonic B Decays

Abstract

We discuss semileptonic B decays of the form B -> J/Psi e nu X as possible probes of intrinsic charm. We calculate the leading order perturbative contribution to the process B- -> J/Psi e- nu_e X and find it to be unobservably small, with a branching ratio ~ 10^-10. We propose a modified spectator model to estimate the intrinsic charm contribution and find that it can be significantly larger, with a branching ratio for B -> (c cbar) e- nu_e X as large as 5 X 10^-7. We show that the process could be observed at these levels by CDF assuming a Run II integrated luminosity of 15 fb^-1, making this a useful reaction to probe the idea of intrinsic charm.