Weak decays of doubly heavy baryons: four-body nonleptonic decay channels

Abstract

The LHCb Collaboration announced the observation of doubly charmed baryon through $\Xi _{c c}^{++} \rightarrow \Lambda _{c}^{+} K^{-} \pi ^{+} \pi ^{+}$ in 2017. Since then, a series of studies of doubly heavy baryons have been presented. $\Xi _{cc}^{++}$ was discovered through nonleptonic four-body decay mode, and experimental data have indicated that the decay modes of $\Xi _{c c}^{++}$ are not saturated by two- and three-body intermediate states. In this work, we analyze the four-body weak decays of doubly heavy baryons $\Xi _{cc}^{++}, \Xi _{cc}^+$, and $\Omega _{cc}^+$. Decay amplitudes for various channels are parameterized in terms of SU(3) irreducible amplitudes. We point out that branching fractions for Cabibbo-allowed processes $\Xi _{cc}^{+}\rightarrow \Lambda _c^+\pi ^+ \pi ^0 K^-$, $\Omega _{cc}^{+}\rightarrow \Lambda _c^+\pi ^+ {\overline{K}}^0 K^-$ would be helpful to search for $\Xi _{cc}^+$ and $\Omega _{cc}^+$ in future measurements at experimental facilities like LHC, Belle II, and CEPC.