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# Measurement of the Ω_𝑐⁰ Lifetime

## I Introduction

Several experiments have searched for the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$, $`J^P=1/2^+\{css\}`$ ground state. The first claim of an observation of the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ was made by CERN experiment WA62 with a cluster of 3 events in the decay channel of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0\mathrm{\Xi }^{}K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^+`$ (throughout this Letter, charge conjugate states are assumed) at a mass of $`2740\pm 20`$ MeV$`/c^2`$ Z.phys.C28.175 . The ARGUS collaboration followed with signals for the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ in $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}\pi ^+\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^+`$ based on $`0.380`$ fb<sup>-1</sup> of data APS.1993 , but these signals were not confirmed by the CLEO experiment which had a much higher sensitivity. Fermilab photoproduction experiment E687 reported an observation of the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ decaying to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+K^{}K^{}\pi ^+`$ with a mass of $`2699.9\pm 1.5\pm 2.5`$ MeV$`/c^2`$ PLB.338.106  and a lifetime of $`86{}_{20}{}^{+27}\pm 28`$ fs PLB.357.678 . E687 published an earlier observation in the $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}\pi ^+`$ channel with a mass of $`2705.9\pm 3.3\pm 2.3`$ MeV$`/c^2`$ PLB.300.190 . In 1995, CERN experiment WA89 reported 200 $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ events in seven modes, although the published lifetime result of $`55{}_{11}{}^{+13}_{23}^{+18}`$ fs comes from only two of the decay modes PLB.358.151 . In 2000, CLEO presented an $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ mass of $`2694.6\pm 2.6\pm 1.9`$ MeV$`/c^2`$ with the combined signal from four decay modes PRL.86.3730 .

Clearly, the lifetime measurement of the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ is still not well measured. Additional measurements with improved statistical accuracy are needed to test theoretical models. The lifetime measurement is particularly important (when combined with other charm baryon lifetime measurements) in estimating the interference effects from different contributing diagrams PLB.289.455 . The current uncertainty on the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ lifetime is more than 30% Phys.Rev.D66  of the lifetime value and is too large to extract meaningful information on the interfering amplitudes. In this Letter we report a new lifetime value of the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ baryon from the FOCUS experiment.

The FOCUS spectrometer is well-suited to reconstruct short-lived charm decays. Two silicon microvertex systems provide excellent separation between the production and charm decay vertices. The target silicon system (TS) consists of two pairs of silicon planes, each immediately downstream of a pair of BeO target segments. The second silicon strip detector (SSD) consists of 12 silicon planes, downstream of the target region. Charged particles are tracked and momentum analyzed with five stations of multiwire proportional chambers in a two magnet forward spectrometer. Three multicell threshold Čerenkov detectors are used to identify electrons, pions, kaons, and protons and are described in detail in a previous FOCUS publication hep.ex.0108011 .

## II Reconstruction of hyperons, $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$

A detailed description of $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$ reconstruction in the FOCUS spectrometer can be found elsewhere hep.ex.0109028 . Using the “cascade” reconstruction algorithm, we are able to reconstruct the decays $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}\mathrm{\Lambda }^0\pi ^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}\mathrm{\Lambda }^0K^{}`$, which have branching fractions of 99.9% and 67.8%, respectively. In this analysis, we only use $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$’s and $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$’s which decay downstream of the SSD. This allows us to track the $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$ or $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$ in the SSD before it decays. A vertex is found between a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^0`$ and a $`\pi ^{}`$ or a $`K^{}`$ and the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^0\pi ^{}`$ or $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^0K^{}`$ combined momentum vector must match the slopes and positions of a track in the SSD. For $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$ candidates, we require mass differences of $`|M(\mathrm{\Xi }^{})M(\mathrm{\Lambda }^0\pi ^{})|>30`$ MeV$`/c^2`$ and $`|M(\mathrm{\Omega }^{})M(\mathrm{\Lambda }^0K^{})|<20`$ MeV$`/c^2`$, ensuring that most of the more copiously produced $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$’s are removed from the $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$ sample.

## III Reconstruction of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ candidates

The $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ candidates are formed by making a vertex hypothesis for the daughter particles. We use a $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$ and three charged tracks of the right charge combination for the $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^+`$ mode, and an $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$ and an oppositely charged track for the $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}\pi ^+`$ mode. The confidence level of the decay vertex of the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ candidate is required to be greater than 10%. The combined momentum vector located at the decay vertex forms the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ track. A candidate driven vertexing algorithm nim.320.519  uses the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ track as a seed track to find a production vertex with a confidence level greater than 1%. The primary multiplicity, including the seed track, must be at least 3 tracks and the production vertex must be inside a target. The significance of separation between the production and the decay vertices ($`L/\sigma _L`$) must be greater than 2 for the $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^+`$ mode and greater than 0 for the $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}\pi ^+`$ mode. Different values are chosen for the $`L/\sigma _L`$ cut due to a difference in the secondary vertex resolution. Čerenkov particle identification (PID) is performed by constructing a log likelihood value $`𝒲_i`$ for the particle hypotheses ($`i=e,\pi ,K,p`$ ). The $`\pi `$ consistency of a track is defined by $`\mathrm{\Delta }𝒲_\pi =𝒲_{\text{min}}𝒲_\pi `$, where $`𝒲_{\text{min}}`$ is the minimum $`𝒲`$ value of the other three hypotheses. Similarly, we define $`\mathrm{\Delta }𝒲_{K,\pi }=𝒲_\pi 𝒲_K`$ for kaon identification. We require $`\mathrm{\Delta }𝒲_{K,\pi }>3`$ for kaons and $`\mathrm{\Delta }𝒲_\pi >6`$ for pions. In the $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^+`$ mode, we add additional combination PID cuts based on Monte Carlo simulation studies. We define $`\mathrm{\Delta }𝒲_\pi `$ to be the positive sum over pion candidates and the negative sum over other particle candidates. Also $`\mathrm{\Delta }𝒲_{K,\pi }+\mathrm{\Delta }𝒲_{K,p}`$ is used for separation between the protons and the kaons. $`\mathrm{\Delta }𝒲_\pi `$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }𝒲_{K,\pi }+\mathrm{\Delta }𝒲_{K,p}`$ are required to be greater than 7. In the $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}\pi ^+`$ mode the momentum asymmetry, $`(P_\mathrm{\Omega }^{}P_{\pi ^+})/(P_\mathrm{\Omega }^{}+P_{\pi ^+})`$, is required to be greater than $`0.2`$ and less than $`0.7`$. Also the $`\pi ^+`$ transverse momentum must be larger than $`0.2`$ GeV$`/c`$ and the the momentum of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ must be greater than $`50`$ GeV$`/c`$. The resulting mass spectra are shown in Fig. 1. The mass spectra are fit with a Gaussian function for the signal distribution and a first order polynomial function for the background. From the combined sample, we find a fitted mass of $`2697.5\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2.2}`$ MeV$`/c^2`$ (systematic uncertainty not evaluated), consistent with the results of other experiments.

## IV Lifetime measurement

To measure a lifetime in fixed target experiments, we use a binned maximum likelihood technique PLB.268.584 . We fit the reduced proper time distribution, defined as $`t^{}=(LN\sigma _L)/\beta \gamma c=tN\sigma _t`$, where $`N`$ is the separation cut value between the production and the decay vertex, $`\beta c`$ is the particle velocity, and $`\gamma `$ is the Lorentz boost factor to the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ center of mass frame.

The signal region is defined to lie within $`2\sigma `$ of the fitted $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ mass. The background is assumed to have the same lifetime behavior in the signal region as in the sidebands, 4–12 $`\sigma `$ away from the peak. Taking $`S`$ as the number of signal events in the signal region and $`B`$ as the total number of background events in the same region, the expected number of events $`n_i`$ in the $`i^{th}`$ reduced proper time bin centered at $`t_i^{}`$ is given by:

$$n_i=S\frac{f(t_i^{})e^{t_i^{}/\tau }}{{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}f(t_i^{})e^{t_i^{}/\tau }}+B\frac{b_i}{{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}b_i}$$
(1)
where $`b_i`$ describes the background reduced proper time as estimated from sidebands and $`f(t_i^{})`$ is a correction function which takes into account the effects of spectrometer acceptance and efficiency, analysis cut efficiencies, and particle absorption. The $`f(t^{})`$ distribution are shown in Fig. 2 for each decay mode.

The likelihood is constructed from the product of the Poisson probability of observing $`s_i`$ events when $`n_i`$ are expected with the Poisson probability of observing $`N_b=b_i`$ events in the sidebands when 4$`B`$ background events are expected. The factor of 4 accounts for the fact that the sideband region is four times wider than the signal region. The likelihood takes the form:

$$=\left(\underset{i}{}\frac{n_i^{s_i}e^{n_i}}{s_i!}\right)\times \left(\frac{(4B)^{N_b}e^{4B}}{N_b!}\right)$$
(2)
The combined likelihood function is given by the product of the likelihoods:

$$\begin{array}{c}\hfill _{\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0}=_{\mathrm{\Xi }^{}K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^+}\times _{\mathrm{\Omega }^{}\pi ^+}\end{array}$$
(3)
There are 3 fit parameters; one parameter for the lifetime $`\tau `$ and two parameters, B$`_{\mathrm{\Xi }^{}K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^+}`$ and B$`_{\mathrm{\Omega }^{}\pi ^+}`$, for the backgrounds from each mode. Our measurement of the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ lifetime is $`72\pm 11`$ fs as shown in Fig. 3. In Fig. 4, the $`t^{}`$ distributions from the data and from the fit are compared with each other.

## V Studies of systematic errors

We have studied various systematic uncertainties associated with the Monte Carlo modeling by computing the lifetimes of independent data samples split by particle/antiparticle, primary vertex position (upstream and downstream target region), $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ momentum (greater than 70 GeV$`/c`$ / less than 70 GeV$`/c`$) and production vertex multiplicity ($`>`$5 / $`5`$). All lifetimes from these samples are consistent within the statistical error as shown in Fig. 5 points 1–8, indicating a negligible systematic error due to the Monte Carlo simulation.

Since the binned likelihood method has been used to measure the lifetime, we have investigated the uncertainty from the fit range and binning effects by examining the variance in lifetime for different $`t^{}`$ bin sizes (Fig. 5 points 10–11) and for different fitting ranges (Fig. 5 point 9).

The proper time resolution of our fully simulated Monte Carlo for the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ data is about 40–50 fs. We have tested the accuracy of the fitting procedure when the lifetime is comparable to the proper time resolution. We used a toy Monte Carlo study to test the fitting procedure using the proper time from which we extracted a systematic uncertainty of 4 fs. The toy Monte Carlo test was also used to validate the statistical error determination.

The systematic uncertainty due to the background contamination is examined by investigating the reflections from other charm baryon decays and by varying the sideband and signal regions (Fig. 5 points 12–17).

The studies of the systematic uncertainties are summarized in Table 1. The total systematic uncertainty of the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ lifetime measurement is determined to be 11 fs by adding all of the systematic uncertainties in quadrature.

## VI Conclusion

We measure an $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ lifetime of $`72\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}11}\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}11}`$ fs using $`64\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}14}`$ events in the two decay modes, $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}\pi ^+`$ and $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^+`$. We compare our result with previous measurements in Table 2. Our lifetime result is consistent with previous $`\mathrm{\Omega }_c^0`$ lifetime results. This 20% measurement of the lifetime substantially improves upon the current (30%) world average.

## VII Acknowledgements

We wish to acknowledge the assistance of the staffs of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the INFN of Italy, and the physics departments of the collaborating institutions. This research was supported in part by the U. S. National Science Foundation, the U. S. Department of Energy, the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare and Ministero della Istruzione, Università e Ricerca, the Brazilian Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, CONACyT-México, and the Korea Research Foundation of the Korean Ministry of Education.