Neutral B meson flavor tagging

Abstract

We present an investigation of the use of net charge and kaon identification to tag the flavor of neutral B mesons. The net charge of the neutral B meson decay products is zero if all charged particles are used and slightly non-zero if only undiscriminated hadronic final states are used. The net charge of the kaons alone correctly tags the identity of the neutral meson in at least a third of all decays. We have parametrized the particle identification capability of several techniques, such as dE/dx in time projection chambers, LEP/SLC ring-imaging chambers and an enhanced BaBar DIRC. Using these parametrisations we compare the relative tagging power of each technique to that of an ideal detector.