A Measurement of the Branching Fraction $\mathcal{B}{\tau }^{+}\to h^{-}{\pi }^0{\nu }_{\tau }$

Abstract

Using data from the CLEO II detector at CESR, we measure $\mathcal{B}({\tau }^{\pm }\to h^{\pm }{\pi }^0{\nu }_{\tau })$ where $h^{\pm }$ refers to either ${\pi }^{\pm }$ or $K^{\pm }$. We use three different methods to measure this branching fraction. The combined result is $\mathcal{B}({\tau }^{\pm }\to h^{\pm }{\pi }^0{\nu }_{\tau })=0.2587\pm 0.0012\pm 0.0042$, in good agreement with Standard Model predictions. This result, in combination with other precision measurements, reduces the significance of the one-prong problem in tau decays. A postscript version is available through World-Wide-Web in http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLNS/1994/

Comments: 9 pages (in REVTEX format) Preprint CLNS94-1281, CLEO 94-11