Search for W boson decays to three charged pions

• Main Authors: Sirunyan, A. M., Tumasyan, A. R., Adam, Wolfgang, Ambrogi, Federico, Asilar, Ece, Md. Ali, Mohd. Adli
• Format: Article
• Language: English; English; English
• Published: American Physical Society 2019
• Subjects: Q Science (General); QC Physics
• Online Access: http://irep.iium.edu.my/79791/1/79791_Search%20for%20W%20Boson%20Decays.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/79791/2/79791_Search%20for%20W%20Boson%20Decays_SCOPUS.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/79791/3/79791_Search%20for%20W%20Boson%20Decays_WOS.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/79791/; https://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.151802

For the first time, a search for the rare decay of the W boson to three charged pions has been performed. Proton-proton collision data recorded by the CMS experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 77.3 fb−1, have been analyzed. No significant excess is observed above the background expectation. An upper limit of 1.01 × 10−6 is set at 95% confidence level on the branching fraction of the W boson to three charged pions. This provides a strong motivation for theoretical calculations of this branching fraction.