Observation of the Decay B+→K+K−π+

Abstract

We report the observation of charmless hadronic decays of charged B mesons to the final state K + K − π + . Using a data sample of 347.5 fb − 1 collected at the Υ ( 4 S ) resonance with the BABAR detector, we observe 429 ± 43 signal events with a significance of 9.6 σ . We measure the inclusive branching fraction B ( B + → K + K − π + ) = [ 5.0 ± 0.5 ( stat ) ± 0.5 ( syst ) ] × 10 − 6 . Inspection of the Dalitz plot of signal candidates shows a broad structure peaking near 1.5 GeV / c 2 in the K + K − invariant mass distribution. We find the direct C P asymmetry to be consistent with zero.