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# Abundance analysis of two extremely metal-poor stars from the Hamburg/ESO SurveyBased on observations collected at the European Southern Observatory, Paranal, Chile

## 1 Introduction

The most metal-poor stars carry the fossil record of the chemical compostion of the Galaxy, and hence allow one to study the ealiest epochs of Galactic chemical evolution. Moreover, there are also *cosmological* applications for metal-poor stars, e.g. the determination of the primordial Lithium abundance (Spite and Spite 1982; Ryan et al. 2000), constraining the baryon density parameter, or individual age determinations (e.g., Cowan et al. 1999), thus setting a lower limit to the age of the Universe. Therefore, in the past decade there has been a fast-growing interest in these stars within the astronomical community. With VLT-UT2 and UVES now being in operation, it has become feasible to study large samples of metal-poor stars at high resolution and high $`S/N`$ in a very reasonable time.

For the past decade, the major source of metal-poor stars has been the so-called HK survey of Beers and collaborators (Beers et al. 1985, 1992; Beers 1999) . Now, an even larger survey volume within which to search for metal-deficient stars has been opened up by use of the digital objective-prism spectra of the Hamburg/ESO Survey (HES; Wisotzki et al. 1996; Reimers and Wisotzki 1997; Wisotzki et al. 2000), since the HES is more than one magnitude deeper than the HK survey. Christlieb (2000) has shown that the selection of metal-poor candidates in the HES by automatic spectral classification is much more efficient than the manual selection applied to the HK survey, so that the amount of telescope time needed for follow-up spectroscopy is reduced, and a *full* exploitation of the $`8\times `$ larger HES volume (compared to the HK survey alone) becomes feasible. An alternative selection method in the HES is the so-called Ca K index method (Christlieb et al. 1999), which looks for stars characterized by a Ca II K line weaker than expected for their $`BV`$ color. This method is almost as efficient in selecting metal-poor stars as automatic classification (Christlieb et al. 2000).

In this paper we report on the first high-resolution observations of metal-poor stars from the HES. Two stars, HE 1303–2708 and HE 1353–2735, were observed with VLT-UT2 in the course of UVES Science Verification in February 2000.

## 2 HES candidate selection and spectroscopic follow-up

The two stars described in this paper were selected by the Ca K-index method (Christlieb et al. 1999). As is obvious from Fig. 1, HE 1303–2708 and HE 1353–2735 were both selected because they show *no* Ca II K ($`\lambda \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}3933}`$ Å) line in the HES spectra.

Tab. 1 lists coordinates (derived from the DSS-I, see e.g. http://archive.eso.org/dss/dss), and photometry for the two stars.

Spectroscopic follow-up observations were obtained in April 1999 using EMMI attached to the ESO-NTT. From these moderate-resolution ($`5`$ Å FWHM), but good quality spectra (see Fig. 1), having $`S/N50`$ at Ca II K and $`S/N>60`$ at the Mg I b triplet ($`\lambda \lambda \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}5167},5173,5184`$ Å), the stellar parameters listed in Tab. 1 were derived via the spectrum synthesis technique. Ca K, Mg I b and Balmer line wings were used as indicators for metallicity, gravity and effective temperature, respectively. Plane-parallel LTE model atmospheres of Reetz et al. (1999, priv. comm.) were used. The analysis was performed strictly differentially to the Sun, and the well-known Calcium-overabundance of $`0.4`$ dex for metal-poor stars (see e.g. Wheeler et al. 1989) was taken into account.

By re-observing and re-analysing a couple of metal-poor stars from the HK survey (Beers 1999, priv. comm.), it turned out that there is an average difference of $`0.5`$ dex between the HES and HK survey \[Fe/H\] scales (Christlieb and Beers 2000), in the sense that stars appear to be more metal-poor in the HK survey than in the HES. Unfortunately it is not possible to identify the physical reason for this difference, because Beers et al. (1999) use average \[Fe/H\] values from the literature (which were hence determined by using many different model atmospheres) to calibrate their method. In order to make the HES metallicities comparable with those of Beers et al. (1999), we also list scaled \[Fe/H\] values in Tab. 1.

## 3 UVES observations

The observations were performed from February 10 to 18, 2000, as part of the VLT-UT2 Science Verification of UVES, the UV and Visual Echelle Spectrograph recently commissioned (D’Odorico et al. 2000). The data from this program were made public to the ESO community in April 2000 (see www.eso.org/science/ut2sv/UVES\_SV.html). The spectrograph setting (Dichroic mode, central wavelength 4700 Å in the blue arm, and 7850 Å in the red arm) provided a wavelength coverage of 4100–5300 Å and 6000–9700 Å, and the entrance slit of 1$`\mathrm{}`$ yielded a resolving power of R$``$45 000. Table 2 gives a short log of the observations, together with the achieved $`S/N`$.

The spectra were reduced using the UVES context within MIDAS, which performs bias subtraction (object and flat-field), inter-order background subtraction (object and flat-field), optimal extraction of the object (above the sky, rejecting cosmic ray hits), division by a flat-field frame extracted with the same weighted-profile as the object, wavelength calibration and rebinning to a constant step and merging of all overlapping orders. The spectra were then corrected for barycentric radial velocity and co-added, and finally normalised. Fig. 2 is an example of the reduced spectrum around the magnesium triplet for both stars.

As can be noted in that figure, it turned out that HE 1353–2735 is a double-lined binary with a faint system of lines shifted to the red by $`25`$$`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. To serve as first epoch for future follow-up of the system, we note that the radial velocities observed for the two components are $`v_{\text{rad,A}}=213.8`$$`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$and $`v_{\text{rad,B}}=187.7`$$`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, at $`\text{MJD}=51584.31030`$.

## 4 Stellar parameters and abundances

Although one of the star is a double lined spectroscopic binary, similar methods can be used to determine the stellar parameters T$`_{\text{eff}}`$ and $`\mathrm{log}g`$ of both stars.

### 4.1 Parameter determination methods

The temperature of the stars were determined from the profile of the wings of the hydrogen lines H$`\alpha `$ and H$`\beta `$. With échelle spectra, an accurate determination of the shape of the continuum above the H$`\alpha `$ wings is rather difficult. We used Gehren’s method (Gehren 1990) which gives an accuracy better than 0.5 % on the continuum placement. This corresponds to a random error of about 100 K on the temperature of the star.

Fig. 3 illustrates the sensitivity of temperature determination using H$`\alpha `$ in this case.

The models used in our analysis were interpolated in the grid of Edvardsson et al. (1993), computed with an updated version of the MARCS code (Gustafsson et al. 1975), which includes improved UV line blanketing (see also Edvardsson et al. 1994). These models, and all calculations presented here, are fully LTE.

The gravity was determined by using the ionisation equilibrium balance of Fe I and Fe II. We caution that this method might yield gravities systematically lower than the physical ones in very metal-poor turnoff stars hotter than the sun; this phenomenon is being attributed to NLTE effects in the atmosphere of metal-deficient stars (see e.g. Fuhrmann et al. 1997; Thévenin and Idiart 1999; Allende Prieto et al. 1999). However, no other method is currently available for very metal-poor stars for which the distance is not known. It should also be noted that NLTE effects act mainly on Fe I, whereas Fe II shows a very small sensitivity to them. A good estimate of the true metallicity of the stars can thus be achieved using Fe II lines. In addition, the gravities were checked on VandenBerg and Irwin (1997) isochrones.

We assumed a microturbulent velocity of 1.3 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. Note that the influence of an error on the microturbulence parameter is negligible since all the metallic lines are very weak ($`<50`$ m Å) and therefore hardly saturated.

### 4.2 Specific methods for HE 1353–2735

Derivation of the individual components A and B and their corresponding stellar parameters from the composite spectrum was performed iteratively. We assume that the two components were born from the same gas cloud, and thus have the same age and metallicity, and differ only by their mass.

To determine the temperature of both stars, we use the method described in Spite et al. (2000a), which consists of the following steps. The temperature of the primary star is strongly constrained by the profile of the wings of the hydrogen lines, while the temperature difference between component A and B of the system is mainly constrained by the relative strength of the metallic lines of both components.

Once the temperatures of the A and B components are chosen, the ratio of their fluxes at any given wavelength are deduced from the bolometric magnitude of the stars read on the theoretical HR diagram of VandenBerg and Irwin (1997). For this purpose, the 12 Gyr isochrone for $`\text{[Fe/H]}=2.3`$ dex was used, shifted by 0.01 in $`\mathrm{log}`$ T$`_{\text{eff}}`$, as needed to fit high parallax subdwarfs, following Cayrel de Strobel et al. (1997). From the evolutionary tracks of VandenBerg and Irwin (1997) we tentatively derive a mass ratio in the range $`0.8<M_B/M_A<0.9`$.

We note that it would be desirable to use isochrones with lower metallicities than those provided by VandenBerg and Irwin (1997) in our analysis. However, using different sets of isochrones has very little effect on the choice of parameters, since only the relative flux between the two components is used, and this does not vary significantly from one set of isochrones to the other. The resulting abundances are thus not sensitive to the choice of isochrones, since the contribution of component B is a veil of the light received from component A. The adopted atmospheric parameters are given in Table 5. For comparison, parameters derived from the moderate-resolution follow-up are also displayed, showing the very good agreement achieved.

### 4.3 Abundance determination

For the single star (HE 1303–2708), abundances were determined by measuring the equivalent widths by means of Gaussian fits of all the lines listed in Tables 3 and 4, from which individual abundances were then computed using the model atmospheres of Edvardsson et al. (1993). For the binary (HE 1353–2735), each line was synthesised taking into account the contributions from the components A and B. Fig. 4 is an example of such a synthetic spectrum, overimposed on the observed spectrum.

For iron, the $`\mathrm{log}gf`$ values were taken from the compilation by Nave et al. (1994). The $`\mathrm{log}gf`$ values for Ti II are from Wiese and Fuhr (1975) and those for Mg I, Ca I, Sc II and Sr II from Ryan et al. (1991). The results from the computations are shown in Tables 3 and 4.

## 5 Discussion

### 5.1 Stellar parameters

The iron content of the stars is $`700\times `$ and $`1600\times `$ lower than solar (\[Fe/H\]=$`2.85`$ and $`3.20`$ dex for HE 1303–2708 and HE 1353–2735, respectively). This is very close to what was predicted from the HES and medium-resolution follow-up spectra. However, *both* stars show a slightly higher metallicity in the high-resolution analysis. This might be due to the fact that the HES abundances were scaled to the HK survey scale by applying an *average* offset. Due to lack of data, it is currently not possible to detect any *trends* with \[Fe/H\] in the scaling, so that it is not possible to exclude that the metallicities of the most metal-poor stars were over-corrected. The effective temperatures and and surface gravities for both stars are within the $`1\sigma `$ uncertainty of the parameters derived from the moderate-resolution spectra.

### 5.2 $`\alpha `$-elements

As most stars in this metallicity range, both stars show $`\alpha `$-elements enhancements, of the order of $`+0.2`$ to $`+0.4`$ with respect to iron (Mg, Ca, Ti, see Table 6), which is expected if the gas which gave birth to the stars has been enriched preferentially by massive type II supernovae (SN II).

### 5.3 $`s`$-process elements

While Barium can also be synthesised via the $`r`$-process, Strontium and Yttrium are thought to be synthesised solely via the “slow neutron-capture” process ($`s`$-process). This process is thought to take place inside AGB stars, and given the secondary nature of the process (iron-group elements need to be pre-existing in the AGB), it starts enriching the Galaxy at later times than the products of massive SN II. Indeed, at very low metallicities, all $`s`$-process elements decline rapidly. However, at metallicities lower than $``$2.5, the \[Sr/Fe\] ratio becomes extremely scattered (see Fig. 5), by a factor almost 200. This large scatter is not found in other elements that can be produced by the $`s`$-process: for example, no Ba-rich dwarf star (\[Ba/Fe\] significantly larger than the average trend) has ever been detected in low-metallicity stars, whereas Sr-rich objects are detected (see e.g. the review by Ryan 2000). The process at work is not yet elucidated: The weak $`s`$-process in $`15M_{\mathrm{}}`$ stars favors low-atomic number neutron-capture species (Prantzos et al. 1990) and would thus produce Sr without much of Ba, but neutron sources at low metallicities would vanish and make the process inefficient; a low neutron-exposure $`r`$-process (Ishimaru and Wanajo 2000) could be at work, but both theoretical grounds and observational clues are lacking to conclude on this topic.

Our program stars happen to sample this scatter in the \[Sr/Fe\] ratio, HE 1303–2708 belonging to the Sr-normal group, and HE 1353–2735 to the Sr-poor. It is interesting to note that HE 1353–2735 is not the only Sr-poor star which is in a binary system: CS 22873-139 is a 19 days period extremely metal-poor binary with \[Sr/Fe\]$`<`$1.1 (Spite et al. 2000a), and CS 22876-032 (period 427 days) is the most metal-poor dwarf known to date, with \[Sr/Fe\]$`<`$0.65 (Norris et al. 2000).

### 5.4 Lithium

In connection to the much debated primordial lithium abundance, and its relation to the observed lithium abundance in metal-poor dwarfs (the so-called Spite-plateau), we checked the status of this element in our two program stars. We determined the abundance from the Li I 6708 Å doublet by comparing it to synthetic spectra. Using the stellar parameters listed in Table 5, we obtain A(Li)=2.15$`\pm `$0.05 and 2.06$`\pm `$0.1 dex for HE 1303–2708 and HE 1353–2735, respectively (see Fig. 6). The uncertainties refer to the determination of the abundance itself, but do not include the uncertainty arising from the choice of stellar parameters. In particular, the Lithium abundance is very sensitive to effective temperature. We recall that we used Balmer lines to determine T$`_{\text{eff}}`$, so that the present results should be compared only with data making use of the same T$`_{\text{eff}}`$ scale. For this purpose, we plotted in Fig. 7 only data which used effective temperatures determined from Balmer lines (see caption for details of sources). As one can judge from the plot, both of our two stars are very close to the average value of A(Li) for their metallicity.

## 6 Conclusions

We presented the first abundance analysis of metal-poor stars from the Hamburg/ESO survey, based on high resolution spectra obtained with UVES at VLT-UT2. With HE 1353–2735, another Sr-rich, extremely metal-poor binary was discovered.

The very good agreement of the stellar parameters deduced from moderate-resolution, but good quality ($`S/N>50`$) spectra with the parameters derived from UVES spectra shows that the investment of considerable amounts of observing time at 4 m class telescopes pays off: reliably determined stellar parameters ensure that no time is wasted at 8 m class telescopes by observing uninteresting objects.

From our investigation it is evident that much larger samples of extremely metal-poor stars have to be analysed at high spectral resolution in order to decipher the chemical history of our galaxy. With UVES at VLT-UT2 now being in operation, this aim has become reachable. Fortunately there will be no lack of metal-poor targets to be observed, since in the HES, hundreds of stars at $`\text{[Fe/H]}<3.0`$ are expected to be discovered, provided moderate-resolution follow-up spectroscopy can be obtained for all candidates.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank the Operations on Paranal and the UVES Science Verification team for the conduction of the observations and the timely public release of the data to the ESO community. N.C. acknowledges financial support from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under grant Re 353/40, and acknowledges the hospitality shown to him at ESO headquarters.


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Anticommuting variables occur in physics when either a supersymmetry or a BRST symmetry occurs. In the first place such variables occur as the parameters of each of these two kinds of symmetry transformations, but they also occur when the operators of the quantized theory are represented by differential operators on function spaces: the presence of canonical anti-commutation relations means that the functions involved are functions of anticommuting variables, an idea which goes back originally to work of Martin  and ideas of Schwinger , and was extensively developed by Berezin  and by De Witt . Anticommuting variables are not used to model physical quantities directly; their use is motivated by the algebraic properties of the function spaces of these variables. In application to physics, results which are real or complex numbers emerge after what has become known as Berezin integration (defined by equation (8) in Section 2) which essentially takes a trace. The approach using anticommuting variables is particularly useful in the context of supersymmetry and BRST symmetry because bose and fermi (or ghost) degrees of freedom, which are related by symmetry transformations, are both handled in the same way.

Path integral quantization in this approach has been developed in terms of limits of time-slicing by a number of authors, starting from the work of Martin  with further work by, among others, Marinov . A clear account of this use of Grassmann variables in fermionic quantization is given by Swanson .

In this paper we investigate a more rigorous, mathematical approach to the path integral quantization of ghost Hamiltonians by developing anticommuting analogues to various constructions in probability theory (such as Brownian motion and stochastic calculus) and applying these objects to establish a Feynman-Kac formula for a wide family of ghost Hamiltonians of the kind which occur when quantizing systems in the BRST approach. These anticommuting analogues are constructed in close parallel to their classical commuting counterparts, so that the two may readily be combined to give a ‘super’ theory in a geometric setting. The anticommuting Brownian motion developed here is distinct from that developed by one of the authors for fermionic quantization , essentially because these two classes of theory have distinct free Hamiltonians.

Other approaches to quantization of fermionic and ghost degrees of freedom have been considered by several authors: it is not possible to give a full list, but examples are the work of Gaveau and Schulman , Applebaum and Hudson  and Hudson and Lindsay , and Kupsch . Closest to the work presented here is the work of Barnett, Streater and Wilde  and of Hasagawa and Streater , as will be discussed in more detail in Section 4.

## 2 Anticommuting variables

In this section we briefly describe the space of anticommuting variables from which our processes are built, together with the key features of the analysis of functions of such variables. Further details may be found in . The approach taken, using Grassmann algebras, is more concrete and more particular than strictly necessary; a more abstract approach is possible, which would be more mathematically economical and elegant, but would not relate in so direct a way to the standard methods of stochastic calculus.

The basic anticommuting algebra used is the real Grassmann algebra with an infinite number of generators; this algebra, which is denoted $`_S`$, is a super algebra with $`_S:=_{S,0}_{S,1}`$ where $`_{S,0}`$ is the even part, consisting of elements which are a linear combination of terms each containing a product of even numbers of the anticommuting generators, while $`_{S,1}`$ is the odd part. We will normally consider homogeneous elements, that is elements $`A`$ which are either even or odd, with parity denoted by $`ϵ_A`$ so that $`ϵ_A=i`$ if $`A`$ is in $`_{S,i},i=0,1`$. The algebra $`_s`$ is supercommutative, that is $`AB=(1)^{ϵ_Aϵ_B}BA`$, so that in particular $`\alpha \beta =\beta \alpha `$ if and only if both $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are both odd. We shall not need to be concerned with analysis on this space directly, and so do not need to specify any norm. Our use of the space will be purely algebraic.

The functions with which we shall principally be concerned, because of their rôle in ghost quantization, have as domain the space $`_S^{0,m}:=(_{S,1})^m`$. A typical element of this space is $`\eta :=(\eta ^1,\mathrm{},\eta ^m).`$ (It will be assumed that $`m`$ is an even number in this paper, although in other contexts this is not necessarily the case.) We will consider functions on this space which are supersmooth , that is (in this simple context where we consider purely anticommuting variables) multinomials in the anticommuting variables. These may be written in a standard form if we introduce multi-index notation: let $`M_n`$ denote the set of all multi-indices of the form $`\mu :=\mu _1\mathrm{}\mu _k`$ with $`1\mu _1<\mathrm{}<\mu _km`$ together with the empty multi-index $`\mathrm{}`$; also let $`|\mu |`$ denote the length of the multi-index $`\mu `$, $`\eta ^{\mathrm{}}:=1`$ (the unit of $`_S`$) and $`\eta ^\mu :=1\eta ^{\mu _1}\mathrm{}\eta ^{\mu _{|\mu |}}`$. A supersmooth function is then a function $`F`$ of the form

$`F:_S^{0,m}`$ $``$ $`_S`$
$`(\eta ^1,\mathrm{},\eta ^m)`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{\mu M_m}{}}F_\mu \eta ^\mu `$ (1)
where the coefficients $`F_\mu `$ are real or complex numbers.

Differentiation of multinomial functions of anticommuting variables is defined by linearity together with the rule

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\eta ^\mu }{\eta ^j}}`$ $`=`$ $`\{\begin{array}{cc}(1)^\mathrm{}1\eta ^{\mu _1}\mathrm{}\widehat{\eta ^{\mathrm{}}}\mathrm{}\eta ^{\mu _{|\mu |}},& \text{ if }j=\mu _{\mathrm{}}\text{ for some }\mathrm{}\text{}1\mathrm{}|\mu |\text{,}\hfill \\ 0& \text{otherwise,}\hfill \end{array}`$ (4)
where $`\widehat{}`$ indicates an omitted factor.

Functions of anticommuting variables obey the following Taylor theorem, which can be proved as in the classical case.

###### Theorem 2.1

If $`F`$ is a supersmooth function on $`_S^{0,m}`$ and $`\xi ,\eta `$ are elements of $`_S^{0,m}`$,

$`F(\xi +\eta )F(\xi )`$ $`=`$ $`\eta ^{a_1}_{a_1}F(\xi )+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2!}}\eta ^{a_2}\eta ^{a_1}_{a_1}_{a_2}F(\xi )+\mathrm{}`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(n1)!}}\eta ^{a_{n1}}\mathrm{}\eta ^{a_1}_{a_1}\mathrm{}_{a_{n1}}F(\xi )`$
$`+{\displaystyle _0^1}{\displaystyle \frac{(1t)^{n1}}{(n1)!}}\eta ^{a_n}\mathrm{}\eta ^{a_1}_{a_1}\mathrm{}_{a_n}F(\xi +t\eta )dt.`$
(Here and later the summation convention for repeated indices is used.) If the number of terms $`n`$ is greater than the number of anticommuting variables $`m`$ this takes the simpler form

$$F(\xi +\eta )=\underset{\mu M_n}{}\eta ^\mu _{\stackrel{~}{\mu }}F(\xi )$$
(7)
where $`_{\stackrel{~}{\mu }}=_{\mu _{|\mu |}}\mathrm{}_{\mu _1}`$.

Integration of functions of these anticommuting variables is defined algebraically by the Berezin rule:

$$_{}d^m\eta F(\eta )=F_{1\mathrm{}m},$$
(8)
where $`F(\eta )=_{\mu M_m}F_\mu \eta ^\mu `$ as in (1), so that $`F_{1\mathrm{}m}`$ is the coefficient of the highest order term.

The space of supersmooth functions of $`m`$ anticommuting variables will be denoted $`(m)`$, and is a $`2^m`$-dimensional vector space. A norm on this space is defined by

$$|F|__G=\underset{\mu M_n}{}|F_\mu |$$
(9)
where again $`F(\eta )=_{\mu M_m}F_\mu \eta ^\mu `$ as in (1). This norm has the Banach algebra property

$$|FG|__G|F|__G|G|__G.$$
(10)
Any linear operator $`K`$ on this space has integral kernel taking $`_S^{0,m}\times _S^{0,m}`$ into $`_S`$ defined by

$$Kf(\theta )=_{}d^m\theta K(\eta ,\theta )f(\theta ).$$
(11)
## 3 Anticommuting probability and stochastic processes

While the standard integral for functions of anticommuting variables, the Berezin integral defined in equation (8), has no measure-theoretic or ‘limit of a sum’ aspect, it can be used to build an anticommuting analogue of probability theory by taking the consistency conditions of the Kolmogorov extension theory as the defining properties, as has been carried out in . The key definition of anticommuting probability space is now given. A restricted form of the definition, sufficient for this paper, is used, with more details and generality available in the references cited.

###### Definition 3.1

A $`(0,m)`$-anticommuting probability space of weight $`w`$ consists of

1. a finite closed interval $`[0,T]`$ of the real line;
2. for each finite set $`B=\{t_1,\mathrm{},t_r\}`$ with $`0t_1<\mathrm{}<t_rT`$, a supersmooth function $`F_B`$ on $`(_S^{0,m})^r`$ such that

1. $$_{}d^m\theta _1\mathrm{}d^m\theta _rF_B(\theta _1,\mathrm{}\theta _r)=w$$
    (12)
    (where $`\theta _1,\mathrm{},\theta _r`$ are each elements of $`_S^{0,m}`$);
    2. if $`B=\{t_1,\mathrm{}t_r\}`$ and $`B^{}=\{t_1,\mathrm{}t_{r1}\}`$ then

    $$_{}d^m\theta _rF_B(\theta _1,\mathrm{}\theta _r)=F_B^{}(\theta _1,\mathrm{}\theta _{r1}).$$
    (13)

Such a space will be denoted $`((_S^{0,m})^{[0,T]},\{F_B\},d\mu )`$.

(The conditions (12) and (13) are analogous to the consistency conditions for finite-dimensional distributions.)

We can now define the notion of random variable on this space; we cannot use conventional measure theory, but must instead build an explicit limiting process into the definition.

###### Definition 3.2

A $`(0,k)`$-dimensional anticommuting random variable

$$G^i:=(G_r^i,B_r),i=1,\mathrm{},k,$$
(14)
for the anticommuting probability space $`((_S^{0,m})^{[0,T]},\{F_B\},d\mu )`$ consists of

1. a sequence of defining sets $`B_1,B_2,\mathrm{}`$, each a finite subset of $`[0,T]`$;
2. a sequence of supersmooth functions $`G_r:(_S^{0,m})^{|B_r|}_S^{0,k},r=1,2,\mathrm{}`$ (with components $`G_r^i,i=1,\mathrm{},k`$) such that for each $`i=1,\mathrm{},k`$ and each multinomial function $`H`$ of $`k`$ variables the sequence

$$I_r(H)=_{}d^m\theta _1\mathrm{}d^m\theta _{|B_r|}F_{B_r}(\theta _1,\mathrm{},\theta _{|B_r|})H\left(G_r(\theta _1,\mathrm{},\theta _{|B_r|})\right)$$
(15)
tends to a limit as $`r`$ tends to infinity. (Here $`|B_r|`$ denotes the number of elements in the set $`B_r`$.)

The limit of $`I_r(H)`$ is called the (anticommuting) expectation value of $`H(G^i)`$, and we write

$$𝔼_G[H(G^i)]𝑑\mu H(G^i):=\underset{r\mathrm{}}{lim}I_r(H).$$
(16)
The case where there exists some finite number $`M`$ such that $`B_q=B_M`$ for all $`q>M`$ is called a finitely-defined anticommuting random variable.

The definition of a stochastic process is analogous to the conventional one:

###### Definition 3.3

Let $`A`$ be an interval contained in $`[0,T]`$. Then a collection

$$X:=\{X_t|tA\}$$
(17)
of $`(0,k)`$-dimensional random variables on an anticommuting probability space$`((_S^{0,m})^{[0,T]},\{F_B\},d\mu )`$ is said to be a $`(0,k)`$-dimensional stochastic process on the space $`((_S^{0,m})^{[0,T]},\{F_B\},d\mu )`$ if for each finite subset $`A_\alpha `$ of $`A`$ the collection $`X:=\{X_t|tA_\alpha \}`$ is an anticommuting random variable on this space.

In this paper we shall be concerned with stochastic processes which are built from solutions of stochastic differential equations.

We end this section with some useful but rather technical definitions starting with a notion of equality of random variables.

###### Definition 3.4

If $`(X^i)`$ and $`(Y^i)`$ are two $`(0,k)`$-dimensional random variables and

$$𝔼_G[H(X)]=𝔼_G[H(Y)],$$
(18)
for all multinomial functions $`H`$ of $`k`$ variables, then we say they are $`\mu `$-equal. This is written

$$X^i=_\mu Y^i.$$
(19)
The next definition defines convergence of a sequence of random variables.

###### Definition 3.5

If $`X`$ is a $`(0,k)`$-dimensional random variable, $`X_r,r=1,2,.`$ a sequence of $`(0,k)`$-dimensional random variables, and

$$\underset{r\mathrm{}}{lim}\left|𝔼_G[H(X_r)H(X)]\right|=0,$$
(20)
for each multinomial function $`H`$ then we say that $`X_r`$ $`\mu `$-converges to $`X`$. This will be denoted

$$\underset{r\mathrm{}}{\mu lim}X_r=X.$$
(21)
While other kinds of equality and convergence can be defined, these forms are sufficient for the purposes of this paper since the Feynman-Kac formula is built from expectations of anticommuting random variables.

## 4 Anticommuting Brownian motion

The anticommuting Brownian motion process will now be constructed. We start by defining anticommuting Wiener space, using finite dimensional marginal distributions built from the heat kernel of the ‘free’ Hamiltonian for functions of $`m`$ anticommuting variables. Recalling that we are assuming that $`m`$ is even, this Hamiltonian is

$$H_F:=\frac{1}{2}e^{ij}\frac{}{\eta ^i}\frac{}{\eta ^j}$$
(22)
where the $`m\times m`$ matrix $`e`$ in block diagonal form is

$$e=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}ϵ& & \\ & \mathrm{}& \\ & & ϵ\end{array}\right)$$
(23)
with $`ϵ=\left(\begin{array}{cc}0& 1\\ 1& 0\end{array}\right).`$ The heat kernel $`e^{H_Ft}(\eta ,\eta ^{})`$ of this Hamiltonian is

$$p(\eta \eta ^{},t):=(\sqrt{t})^m\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{e_{ji}(\eta ^i\eta ^i)(\eta ^j\eta ^j)}{2t}\right)$$
(24)
as may be verified by observing that $`p(\eta \eta ^{},t)`$ satisfies the equation

$$\frac{}{t}p(\eta ,\eta ^{},t)=H_Fp(\eta ,\eta ^{},t)$$
(25)
and reduces to the Grassmann delta function $`\delta (\eta \eta ^{}):=\mathrm{\Pi }_{i=1}^m(\eta ^i\eta ^{}{}_{}{}^{i})`$ when $`t=0`$.

Anticommuting Brownian motion is now defined to be the anticommuting stochastic process constructed from this heat kernel in the following way:

###### Definition 4.1

Anticommuting Wiener space of dimension $`(0,m)`$ (where $`m`$ is even) on the time interval $`[0,T]`$ is the anticommuting probability space $`((_S^{0,m})^{[0,T]},\{F_B\},d\mu )`$ with

$$F_{\{t_1,\mathrm{},t_N\}}(\eta _1,\mathrm{},\eta _N):=p(\eta _1,t_1)p(\eta _2\eta _1,t_2t_1)\mathrm{}p(\eta _N\eta _{N1},t_Nt_{N1})$$
(26)
for each finite set $`\{t_1,\mathrm{},t_N\}`$ of real numbers for which $`0t_1<\mathrm{}<t_NT`$.

It follows immediately from the semigroup property of the heat kernel $`p(\eta ,\eta ^{},t)`$ that the finite dimensional marginal distributions $`F_{t_1,\mathrm{},t_N}`$ satisfy the necessary consistency condition contained in Definition 3.1, and then by direct calculation that the weight of the space is $`1`$.

We now define $`m`$-dimensional anticommuting Brownian motion to be the stochastic process $`\beta _t`$ defined by this anticommuting probability space, so that for any supersmooth function $`H`$ of $`mN`$ anticommuting variables, where $`N`$ is a positive integer,

$`𝔼_G\left[H(\beta _{t_1}^a,\mathrm{},\beta _{t_N}^a)\right]`$ (27)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{}}d^m\theta _1\mathrm{}d^m\theta _Np(\theta _1,t_1)p(\theta _2\theta _1,t_2t_1)`$
$`\mathrm{}p(\theta _N\theta _{N1},t_Nt_{N1})H(\theta _1,\mathrm{},\theta _N).`$
The following expectations, which will prove useful in subsequent sections, may be calculated directly from this definition.

$`𝔼_G[\beta _t^a]`$ $`=`$ $`0`$
$`𝔼_G[\beta _t^a\beta _t^b]`$ $`=`$ $`e^{ab}t`$
$`𝔼_G[\beta _{t_1}^a\beta _{t_2}^b]`$ $`=`$ $`e^{ab}\mathrm{min}(t_1,t_2)`$
$`𝔼_G[(\beta _{t_2}^a\beta _{t_1}^a)(\beta _{t_2}^b\beta _{t_1}^b)]`$ $`=`$ $`e^{ab}|t_2t_1|.`$ (28)
An important consequence of these results is that the process $`\beta _t`$ has independent increments:

$$𝔼_G[(\beta _{t_2}^a\beta _{t_1}^a)(\beta _{s_2}^b\beta _{s_1}^b)]=0$$
(29)
if $`t_2>t_1s_2>s_1`$.

These results show that anticommuting Brownian motion has the same covariance as the Itô Clifford process introduced by Barnett, Streater and Wilde  and further studied by Hasagawa and Streater . From this point of view we are providing a concrete model of these processes, and applying them in a novel way to path integration in ghost quantum mechanics.

The results (4) can be further extended if we introduce the notion of adapted process in close analogy with the standard definition.

###### Definition 4.2

A stochastic process $`F_t,t[0,T]`$ on $`m`$-dimensional anticommuting Wiener space such that for each $`t`$ in $`[0,T]`$ $`F_t`$ is a function of $`\{\beta _s|0st\}`$ is said to be $`[0,t]`$-adapted.

(The time interval, $`[0,t]`$, may be omitted when the context makes it clear.) As in the classical case, it can then be shown by direct calculation that, if $`F_t`$ is a $`[0,t]`$-adapted process and $`0s<uT`$, then

$`𝔼_G[F_s^a(\beta _u^b\beta _s^b)]`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$
$`\text{and}𝔼_G[F_s^a(\beta _u^b\beta _s^b)(\beta _u^c\beta _s^c)]`$ $`=`$ $`𝔼_G[F_s^a]e^{bc}(us).`$ (30)
## 5 Anticommuting stochastic integrals

As in the classical case, two kinds of integrals of anticommuting stochastic processes will be useful, those with respect to time and those along (anticommuting) Brownian paths. Before defining these integrals it is useful to introduce a notation for a decreasing sequence of partitions of the interval $`[0,t],tT`$. For $`N=1,2,\mathrm{}`$ and fixed $`t`$ in $`[0,T]`$ the set $`\{t_0^{_{[N]}},t_1^{_{[N]}},\mathrm{},t_N^{_{[N]}}\}`$ is a subset of $`[0,T]`$ with $`t_0^{_{[N]}}=0`$, $`t_0^{_{[N]}}<\mathrm{}<t_N^{_{[N]}}`$, $`t_N^{_{[N]}}=t`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }t^{_{[N]}}sup_{r=1..N}|t_r^{_{[N]}}t_{r1}^{_{[N]}}|0`$ as $`N\mathrm{}`$.

###### Definition 5.1

The integral with respect to time of an $`n`$-dimensional adapted process $`A_s^i`$ is defined (when it exists independent of the choice of decreasing sequence of partitions) to be the process

$$_0^t𝑑sA_s^i:=\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}\underset{r=1}{\overset{N}{}}(t_r^{_{[N]}}t_{r1}^{_{[N]}})A_{t_{r1}^{_{[N]}}}^i.$$
(31)
It is clearly $`[0,t]`$-adapted.

The anticommuting analogue of the Itô integral will now be defined:

###### Definition 5.2

Suppose that $`C_{as}^i,i=1,\mathrm{},n,a=1,\mathrm{},m`$ is an $`n\times m`$-dimensional adapted process on anticommuting Wiener space. Then the Itô integral of the process is defined (when it exists independent of the choice of sequence of decreasing partitions) to be

$$_0^t𝑑\beta _s^aC_{as}^i:=\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}\underset{r=1}{\overset{N}{}}(\beta _{t_r}^a\beta _{t_{r1}}^a)C_{at_{r1}}^i.$$
(32)
It is clearly $`[0,t]`$-adapted.

At this stage we do not consider necessary or sufficient conditions on the processes $`A_t,C_t`$ for these integrals to exist; this question is addressed directly for the various processes considered in applications in later sections.

###### Definition 5.3

An anticommuting Itô process or anticommuting stochastic integral is a process of the form

$$Z_t^i=Z_0^i+_0^t𝑑sA_s^i+_0^t𝑑\beta _s^aC_{as}^i,$$
(33)
where $`A_s^i`$ and $`C_{as}^i`$ are $`[0,s]`$-adapted processes.

Using (4) and (4) the anticommuting Itô isometry can be proved in close analogy to the classical case .

###### Proposition 5.4

Suppose that for $`i=1\mathrm{}k`$

$$Z_t^i=_0^t𝑑\beta _s^aC_{as}^i$$

with each $`Z^i`$ of definite Grassmann parity. Then

$$𝔼_G\left[Z_t^iZ_t^j\right]=_0^t𝑑s𝔼_G[(1)^{ϵ_{Z^i}}e^{ba}C_{as}^iC_{bs}^j].$$
(34)
## 6 Anticommuting stochastic differential equations

In this section the anticommuting analogues of stochastic differential equations will be considered; these are applied in the final section to give a proof of the Feynman-Kac formula for a wide class of Hamiltonians. No very general theory is needed, a rather prescriptive and constructive approach is taken, motivated by the application to path integration. We simply define a sequence of random variables which satisfy the required stochastic differential equation.

###### Theorem 6.1

Suppose that for $`i=1,\mathrm{}n`$ and $`a=1,\mathrm{},m`$ the functions $`A^i`$ and $`C_a^i`$ are supersmooth functions on $`_S^{0,m}`$ Suppose also that $`\zeta _0`$ is an element of $`_S^{0,m}`$. Then there exists a unique adapted process $`\zeta _t`$ which satisfies the $`n`$-dimensional system of anticommuting stochastic differential equations

$$\zeta _t^i=_\mu \zeta _0^i+_0^t𝑑sA_s^i(\zeta _s)+_0^t𝑑\beta _s^aC_{as}^i(\zeta _s).$$
(35)
Outline of proof: To prove existence we construct a solution as the limit of an inductive process. Let the sequence $`\zeta _{t,k},k=1,2,\mathrm{},t[0,T]`$ of $`n`$-dimensional anticommuting stochastic processes be defined by

$`\zeta _{t,0}^i`$ $`=`$ $`\zeta _0^i`$
$`\zeta _{t,k+1}^i`$ $`=`$ $`\zeta _0^i+{\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑sA_s^i(\zeta _{s,k})+{\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑\beta _s^aC_{as}^i(\zeta _{s,k}).`$ (36)
Then, using the Itô isometry Proposition 5.4, it may be proved by induction that there exists a positive constant $`A`$ such that (for any pair of finite subsets $`\{t_1,\mathrm{},t_r\}`$, $`\{t_1^{},\mathrm{},t_p^{}\}`$ of $`[0,T]`$ and corresponding pair of finite sets of multi-indices $`\mu ^{[1]},\mathrm{},\mu ^{[r]}`$, $`\nu ^{[1]},\mathrm{},\nu ^{[p]}`$)

$`|𝔼_G\left((\zeta _{t_1,k}\zeta _{t_1,k1})^{\mu ^{[1]}}\mathrm{}(\zeta _{t_r,k}\zeta _{t_r,k1})^{\mu ^{[r]}}\zeta _{t_{1,k1}^{}}^{\nu ^{[1]}}\mathrm{}\zeta _{t_{p,k1}^{}}^{\nu ^{[p]}}\right)|__G`$ (37)
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(A^{|\mu ^{[1]}|}t)^k}{k!}}\mathrm{}{\displaystyle \frac{(A^{|\mu ^{[r]}|}t)^k}{k!}}(A^{|\nu ^{[1]}|+\mathrm{}+|\nu ^{[p]}|})^{k1}.`$
This result may be used to show that for each $`t`$ in $`[0,T]`$ and each $`\mu `$ in $`M_n`$ the sequence $`|𝔼_G(\zeta _{t,k}^\mu )|__G`$ is Cauchy and hence that $`\zeta _{t,k}`$ converges to an anticommuting random variable $`\zeta _t`$ satisfying (35).

To prove uniqueness, we suppose that $`\omega _t`$ is also a solution to (35). Then, again by induction over $`k`$, it can be shown that there exists a positive constant $`B`$ such that $`f_{t,k}:=sup_{\mu ,\nu M_n,\mu \mathrm{}}|𝔼_G(\omega _t^\mu \zeta _{t,k}^\mu )\zeta _{t,k}^\nu |__G`$ satisfies

$$0f_{t,k}B_0^t𝑑sf_{s,k}.$$
(38)
and hence that, for each $`t`$ in $`[0,T]`$, $`lim_k\mathrm{}f_{t,k}=0`$, so that $`\omega _t=_\mu \zeta _t`$.

The stochastic differential equation (35) is often written in differential form as

$$d\zeta _t^i=dtA_s^i(\zeta _t)+d\beta _t^aC_{at}^i(\zeta _t).$$
(39)
In order to exploit solutions to anticommuting stochastic differential equations to gain information about diffusions, the following Itô formula for stochastic integrals is essential. As in the classical Itô theorem, there is a second order term which would not be present in the deterministic setting.

###### Theorem 6.2

Let $`X_t^i,i=1,\mathrm{},p+q`$ be a stochastic process on anticommuting Wiener space with $`X^i`$ even for $`i=1,\mathrm{},p`$ and $`X^i`$ odd for $`i=p+1,\mathrm{}p+q`$, and with each $`X^i`$ having the form

$$X_t^i=X_0^i+_0^t𝑑sA^i(s,\zeta _s)+_0^t𝑑\beta _s^aC_a^i(s,\zeta _s)$$
(40)
where $`\zeta ^j,j=1,\mathrm{},n^{}`$ are solutions to an $`n^{}`$-dimensional system of anticommuting stochastic differential equations, $`\beta _t`$ is $`m`$-dimensional anticommuting Brownian motion, and the functions $`A^i,C_a^i`$ such that there exists a positive constant $`K`$ for which $`|A^i(t,.)|__G<K,|C_a^i(t,.)|__G<K`$ each $`t`$ in $`[0,T]`$. Then, if $`F`$ is a supersmooth function of $`p`$ even and $`q`$ odd variables (in the sense that $`F(X^i)=_{\mu M_q}F_\mu (X^1,\mathrm{},X^p)X^{\mu _1+p}\mathrm{}X^{\mu _{|\mu |}+p}`$ with each $`F_\mu `$ a smooth function of $`p`$ even variables which, together with its first and second and third derivatives, is uniformly bounded) then

$`F(X_t)`$
$`=_\mu `$ $`F(X_0)+{\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑X_s^i_iF(X_s)`$
$`+\frac{1}{2}{\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑s(1)^{ϵ_{X^i}}e^{ab}C_b^i(X_s)C_a^j(X_s)_j_iF(X_s).`$
Outline of proof: For each of the sequence of decreasing partitions of $`[0,t]`$ we note that

$$F(X_t)F(X_0)=\underset{r=1}{\overset{N}{}}\mathrm{\Delta }F_r$$
(42)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }F_r=F(X_{t_r^{_{[N]}}})F(X_{t_{r1}^{_{[N]}}})`$. Now at the $`N^{\mathrm{th}}`$ approximation to the stochastic integrals $`X_t^i`$ we have

$`\mathrm{\Delta }F_r`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }X_r^i_iF(X_{t_{r1}^{_{[N]}}})+\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Delta }X_r^j\mathrm{\Delta }X_r^i_i_jF(X_{t_{r1}^{_{[N]}}})`$ (43)
$`+\text{higher order terms}`$
where

$$\mathrm{\Delta }X_r^i=A^i(t_{r1}^{_{[N]}},\zeta _{t_{r1}^{_{[N]}}})\delta t_r^{_{[N]}}+\delta \beta _{t_r^{_{[N]}}}^aC_a^i(t_{r1}^{_{[N]}},\zeta _{t_{r1}^{_{[N]}}}).$$
(44)
If we now take the $`k^{\mathrm{th}}`$ approximation to $`\zeta _t`$ we can show by induction, using the anticommuting Itô isometry, that the only terms in the sum (42) which are of order $`(\delta t_r^{_{[N]}})^1`$ are $`\mathrm{\Delta }X_t^i_iF(X_{t_r^{_{[N]}}})`$ (coming from the first order terms in the Taylor expansion) and

$$\frac{1}{2}\delta t_r^{_{[N]}}(1)^{ϵ_{X^i}}e^{ab}C_b^i(t_{r1}^{_{[N]}},\zeta _{t_{r1}^{_{[N]}}})C_a^j(t_{r1}^{_{[N]}},\zeta _{t_{r1}^{_{[N]}}})_j_iF(X_{t_r^{_{[N]}}})$$

from the second order term. All other terms are of higher order in $`\delta t_r^{_{[N]}}`$ and thus do not contribute to the sum in the limit as $`N`$ tends to infinity.

A simple but useful special case of this theorem is the integration by parts formula contained in the following corollary.

###### Corollary 6.3

The differential of the product of two stochastic integrals of the form (40) is given by the integration by parts formula

$$d(X_t^1X_t^2)=X_t^1dX_t^2+dX_t^1X_t^2+\frac{1}{2}(1)^{ϵ_{X^1}}e^{ab}C_a^1(t,\zeta _t)C_b^2(t,\zeta _t)dt.$$
(45)
An example of the solution of a particular stochastic differential equation will now be described; the process which solves the equation is the anticommuting analogue of the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process.

###### Example 6.4

Consider the two-dimensional system of anticommuting stochastic differential equations

$$\zeta _t^i=_0^t𝑑s(r\zeta _s^i)+_0^t𝑑\beta _s^ac_a^i,$$
(46)
where $`i,a=1,2`$ and $`r,c_a^i`$ are even constants. This may be solved using the same method as in the standard theory of stochastic calculus, by applying the anticommuting form of the Itô integration by parts formula to the product $`e^{rt}\zeta _t^i`$ obtaining

$`e^{rt}\zeta _t^j`$ $`=`$ $`\zeta _0^j+{\displaystyle _0^t}d(e^{rs})\zeta _s^j+{\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑\zeta _t^ie^{rs}`$ (47)
$`=`$ $`\zeta _0^j+re^{rs}{\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑s\zeta _s^j+{\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑s(r\zeta ^ie^{rs})+{\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑\beta _s^ac_a^ie^{rs}`$
$`=`$ $`\zeta _0^j+{\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑\beta _s^ac_a^ie^{rs}.`$
so that

$$\zeta _t^i=\zeta _0^ie^{rt}+e^{rt}_0^t𝑑\beta _s^ac_a^ie^{rs}.$$
(48)
## 7 The anticommuting Feynman-Kac formula

In this section we prove a Feynman-Kac formula for Hamiltonians which are even, second-order differential operators on the space $`(n)`$ of supersmooth functions of $`n`$ anticommuting variables of the form

$$H=\frac{1}{2}g^{kj}_j_k+i\alpha ^j_j+v,$$
(49)
where $`v`$ is an even function in $`(n)`$, $`\alpha ^i,i=1,\mathrm{},n`$ are odd functions and $`g^{kj}=e^{ab}c_b^kc_a^j`$ with $`c_b^k,k=1,\mathrm{},n,b=1,\mathrm{},m`$ even functions. The approach taken is similar to that used for conventional, commuting diffusions, as presented for instance in the books of Arnold , Friedman  and Øksendal .

###### Theorem 7.1

If $`H`$ is a Hamiltonian of the form (49) and $`t`$ is in $`[0,T]`$ then for any $`F`$ in $`(n)`$

$$\left(e^{Ht}F\right)(\xi )=𝔼_G\left[e^{_0^t𝑑sv(\zeta _s)}F(\zeta _t)\right],$$
(50)
where $`\zeta _t`$ is the anticommuting diffusion which starts from $`\xi `$ and satisfies

$$d\zeta _t^j=idt\alpha ^j(\zeta _t)+d\beta _t^ac_a^j(\zeta _t).$$
(51)
Proof: For $`t[0,T]`$ define the operator $`U_t`$ on $`(n)`$ by

$$U_tF(\xi )=𝔼_G\left(e^{_0^tv(\zeta _s)𝑑s}F(\zeta _t)\right).$$
(52)
Then, using the Itô formula (6.2), we find that

$$U_tF(\xi )F(\xi )=_0^t𝑑sU_sHF(\xi )$$
(53)
so that $`U_t=\mathrm{exp}Ht`$ as required.

The first example of the application of this formula that we will consider gives the basic path integral formula for the flat Hamiltonian:

###### Example 7.2

Consider the Hamiltonian

$$H=_1_2.$$
(54)
acting on $`(2)`$. Working on two-dimensional anticommuting Wiener space, the corresponding diffusion is the solution to

$$d\zeta _t^a=d\beta _t^a,a=1,2$$
(55)
starting from $`\xi `$. This has solution $`\zeta _t=\xi +\beta _t`$ so that

$`e^{Ht}F(\xi )`$ $`=`$ $`𝔼_G\left[F(\xi +\beta _t)\right]`$ (56)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle d^2\eta t\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\eta ^1\eta ^2}{t}\right)F(\xi +\eta )}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle d^2\eta t\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{(\eta ^1\xi ^1)(\eta ^2\xi ^2)}{t}\right)F(\eta )}`$
simply reflecting the fact that anticommuting Brownian motion is built from the heat kernel of this very Hamiltonian.

A closely related example gives the basic path integral formula for the flat Hamiltonian with potential:

###### Example 7.3

For the Hamiltonian

$$H=_1_2+v$$
(57)
(with $`v`$ an even function) acting on $`(2)`$

$$e^{Ht}F(\xi )=𝔼_G\left(e^{_0^t𝑑sv(\xi +\beta _s)}\left(F(\xi +\beta _t)\right)\right).$$
(58)
The next example, which is also two dimensional, concerns the Hamiltonian whose heat kernel gives the distribution for the anticommuting Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process described in Example 6.4.

###### Example 7.4

In the case of the Hamiltonian

$$H=c^2_1_2+r(\eta ^1_1+\eta ^2_2)$$
(59)
we must consider the diffusion $`\zeta _t`$ starting from $`\xi `$ and satisfying

$$d\zeta _t^a=r\zeta _t^adt+cd\beta _t^a,$$
(60)
so that using (48)

$$\zeta _t^a=\xi ^ae^{rt}+e^{rt}_0^t𝑑\beta _s^ae^{rs}.$$
(61)
Applying the Feynman-Kac formula to four functions which form a basis of $`(2)`$, that is, $`F_0(\eta )=1`$, $`F_1(\eta )=\eta ^1`$, $`F_2(\eta )=\eta ^2`$ and $`F_{12}(\eta )=\eta ^1\eta ^2`$, we obtain

$`\mathrm{exp}^{Ht}F_0(\xi )`$ $`=`$ $`𝔼_G[1]=1`$
$`\mathrm{exp}^{Ht}F_1(\xi )`$ $`=`$ $`𝔼_G\left[\xi ^1e^{rt}+e^{rt}{\displaystyle _0^t}c𝑑\beta _s^1e^{rs}\right]`$
$`=`$ $`e^{rt}\xi ^1`$
$`\mathrm{exp}^{Ht}F_2(\xi )`$ $`=`$ $`e^{rt}\xi ^2\text{and}`$
$`\mathrm{exp}^{Ht}F_1(\xi )`$ $`=`$ $`𝔼_G[(\xi ^1e^{rt}+e^{rt}{\displaystyle _0^t}cd\beta _s^1e^{rs})`$ (62)
$`\times (\xi ^2e^{rt}+e^{rt}{\displaystyle _0^t}cd\beta _s^2e^{rs})]`$
$`=`$ $`e^{2rt}\xi ^1\xi ^2+{\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑sc^2e^{2rs}e^{2rt}`$
$`=`$ $`e^{2rt}\xi ^1\xi ^2+{\displaystyle \frac{c^2}{2r}}(1e^{2rt})`$
so that the heat kernel for this Hamiltonian is

$$e^{Ht}(\xi ,\eta )=\eta ^1\eta ^2e^{rt}(\xi ^1\eta ^2+\eta ^1\xi ^2)+\frac{c^2}{2r}(1e^{2rt})+e^{2rt}\xi ^1\xi ^2.$$
(63)
The next example we consider is the anticommuting Harmonic Oscillator. This is the fundamental example in BRST quantization in the sense that quantizing a quantum mechanical system with $`k`$ momenta constrained to be zero leads to a ghost Hamiltonian with the form of the $`2k`$-dimensional anticommuting harmonic oscillator . For simplicity we consider only the two dimensional case.

###### Example 7.5

Consider the Hamiltonian

$$H=_1_2\eta ^1\eta ^2$$
(64)
which leads to the anticommuting diffusion

$$\zeta _t^a=\xi ^a+\beta _t^a,a=1,2.$$
(65)
The anticommuting Feynman-Kac formula for this diffusion is

$$\left(e^{Ht}F\right)(\xi )=𝔼_G\left[e^{_0^t𝑑s(\xi ^1+\beta _s^1)(\xi ^2+\beta _s^2)}F(\xi +\beta _t)\right].$$
(66)
To evaluate this integral for finite $`t`$ we will use essentially the same technique as that employed by Simon in . To achieve this we need to extract the kernel of the time evolution operator from this expression, and define the analogue of conditional expectation. Taking the definition of the expectation with respect to anticommuting Brownian motion (66) becomes (we put $`\mathrm{\Delta }t:=t_rt_{r1}`$)

$`\left(e^{Ht}F\right)(\eta )`$ (67)
$`=`$ $`\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}{\displaystyle _{}}d^2\eta _1\mathrm{}d^2\eta _Np(\eta _1,\mathrm{\Delta }t)p(\eta _2\eta _1,\mathrm{\Delta }t)\mathrm{}p(\eta _N\eta _{N1},\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$
$`\times \mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \underset{r=0}{\overset{N1}{}}}\mathrm{\Delta }t(\eta ^1+\eta _r^1)(\eta ^2+\eta _r^2)\right)F(\eta +\eta _N).`$
Making a change of variables $`\eta _r\eta _r^{}:=\eta +\eta _r`$ dropping the primes and replacing $`\eta _N`$ by $`\eta ^{}`$, we obtain

$$\left(e^{Ht}F\right)(\eta )=_{}𝑑\eta ^{}\left(e^{Ht}F\right)(\eta ,\eta ^{})F(\eta ^{}),$$
(68)
where

$`\left(e^{Ht}F\right)(\eta ,\eta ^{})=`$ (69)
$`=`$ $`\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}{\displaystyle _{}}𝑑\eta _1\mathrm{}𝑑\eta _{N1}p(\eta _1\eta ,\mathrm{\Delta }t)p(\eta _2\eta _1,\mathrm{\Delta }t)\mathrm{}p(\eta _{N1}\eta _{N2},\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$
$`\times p(\eta ^{}\eta _{N1},\mathrm{\Delta }t)\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \underset{r=0}{\overset{N1}{}}}\mathrm{\Delta }t\eta _r^1\eta _r^2\right)`$
$`=`$ $`\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}{\displaystyle _{}}𝑑\eta _1\mathrm{}𝑑\eta _{N1}p(\eta _1\eta ,\mathrm{\Delta }t)p(\eta _2\eta _1,\mathrm{\Delta }t)\mathrm{}p(\eta _{N1}\eta _{N2},\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$
$`\times p(\eta ^{}\eta _{N1},\mathrm{\Delta }t){\displaystyle \frac{p(\eta \eta ^{},t)}{p(\eta \eta ^{},t)}}\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \underset{r=0}{\overset{N1}{}}}\mathrm{\Delta }t\eta _r^1\eta _r^2\right)`$
$`:=`$ $`p(\eta \eta ^{},t)𝔼_G\left[\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑s\omega _s^1\omega _s^2\right)\omega _0=\eta ,\omega _t=\eta ^{}\right],`$
defining both the process $`\omega _t`$ (which will be called pinned anticommuting Brownian motion), and the conditional expectation operator.

Following Simon we use the Brownian bridge to represent such pinned Brownian motion processes. The (2-dimensional) anticommuting Brownian bridge process starting and ending at 0, over the time interval $`[0,1]`$ is defined by

$$\alpha _s^i:=\beta _s^is\beta _1^i.$$
(70)
In close analogy with the classical case, it may be confirmed using (4) that this process has covariance

$$𝔼_G\left[\alpha _s^i\alpha _u^j\right]=e^{ij}s(1u),$$
(71)
for $`0su1`$. This allows us to express $`\omega _t`$ as

$$\omega ^i(s)=\eta ^i\left(1\frac{s}{t}\right)+\eta ^i\frac{s}{t}+t^{1/2}\alpha ^i\left(\frac{s}{t}\right).$$
(72)
Since $`_0^t𝑑sf(s/t)=t_0^1𝑑s^{}f(s^{})`$, we can restrict our attention to $`\omega _s`$ for $`0s1`$.

We now take the Fourier expansion of $`\alpha (s)`$,

$$\alpha _s^i=\underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\mathrm{}_r\xi _r^if_r(s),i=1,2$$
(73)
where $`\mathrm{}_r:=(r\pi )^1`$, $`f_r(s):=\sqrt{2}\mathrm{sin}(r\pi s)`$ and the $`\xi _r`$ are the anticommuting analogue of independent Gaussian random variables, that is to say, their formal measure is

$$\underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\left(d^2\xi _r\mathrm{exp}\xi _r^1\xi _r^2\right).$$
(74)
It can be confirmed (as in the book of Simon  for the classical case) that this Fourier expansion for the Brownian bridge gives the same covariance as (71) above when expectations are taken using this formal measure.

Pinned Brownian motion $`\omega (s)`$ thus has the Fourier expansion

$$\omega ^i(s)=\underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}f_r(s)(\gamma _r^i+\sqrt{t}\mathrm{}_r\xi _r^i),$$
(75)
where $`\gamma _r^i=\sqrt{2}\mathrm{}_r(\eta ^i+(1)^{r+1}\eta ^i)`$. Substituting this into the expression (69) for the kernel of the time evolution operator we obtain

$`\left(e^{Ht}F\right)(\eta ,\eta ^{})`$ (76)
$`=`$ $`p(\eta \eta ^{},t){\displaystyle _{}}\left({\displaystyle \underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}d^2\xi _r\mathrm{exp}\xi _r^1\xi _r^2\right)`$
$`\times \mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle _0^1}𝑑st\left({\displaystyle \underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}f_r(s)(\gamma _r^1+\sqrt{t}\mathrm{}_r\xi _r^1)\right)\left({\displaystyle \underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}f_r(s)(\gamma _r^2+\sqrt{t}\mathrm{}_r\xi _r^2)\right)\right]`$
$`=`$ $`p(\eta \eta ^{},t){\displaystyle _{}}\left({\displaystyle \underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}d\xi _r\mathrm{exp}\xi _r^1\xi _r^2\right)\mathrm{exp}{\displaystyle \underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}t(\gamma _r^1+\sqrt{t}\mathrm{}_r\xi _r^1)(\gamma _r^2+\sqrt{t}\mathrm{}_r\xi _r^2)`$
$`=`$ $`p(\eta \eta ^{},t){\displaystyle _{}}\left({\displaystyle \underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}d\xi _r\mathrm{exp}\xi _r^1\xi _r^2\right)`$
$`\times \mathrm{exp}{\displaystyle \underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}t^2\mathrm{}_r^2(\gamma _r^1t^{1/2}\mathrm{}_r^1+\xi _r^1)(\gamma _r^2t^{1/2}\mathrm{}_r^1+\xi _r^2).`$
Evaluating the Gaussian integrals we obtain

$`\left(e^{Ht}F\right)(\eta ,\eta ^{})`$ (77)
$`=`$ $`t{\displaystyle \underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(1+t^2\mathrm{}_r^2)\mathrm{exp}\left[(\eta ^1\eta ^2+\eta ^{}{}_{}{}^{1}\eta _{}^{}2)\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{t}}+{\displaystyle \underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{2t\mathrm{}_r^2}{1+t^2\mathrm{}_r^2}}\right)\right]`$
$`\times \mathrm{exp}\left[\left(\eta ^1\eta ^{}{}_{}{}^{2}+\eta ^{}{}_{}{}^{1}\eta _{}^{2}\right)({\displaystyle \frac{1}{t}}+{\displaystyle \underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{2(1)^rt\mathrm{}_r^2}{1+t^2\mathrm{}_r^2}})\right].`$
Using the Weierstrass-Hadamard factorisation of $`\mathrm{sinh}x`$:

$$\mathrm{sinh}x=x\underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}(1+\mathrm{}_r^2x^2),$$
(78)
and the Mittag-Leffler expansions of $`(\mathrm{sinh}x)^1`$ and $`\mathrm{coth}x`$:

$$(\mathrm{sinh}x)^1=\frac{1}{x}+\underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{2(1)^rx\mathrm{}_r^2}{1+x^2\mathrm{}_r^2},\mathrm{coth}x=\frac{1}{x}+\underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{2x\mathrm{}_r^2}{1+x^2\mathrm{}_r^2}$$
(79)
we finally find the kernel for the time evolution operator to be

$`\left(e^{Ht}F\right)(\eta ,\eta ^{})`$ (80)
$`=`$ $`\mathrm{sinh}t\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{sinh}t}}[(\eta ^1\eta ^2+\eta ^{}{}_{}{}^{1}\eta _{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2})\mathrm{cosh}t(\eta ^1\eta ^{}{}_{}{}^{2}+\eta ^{}{}_{}{}^{1}\eta _{}^{2})]\right].`$
Finally we consider an example with quartic fermionic terms.

###### Example 7.6

Consider the Hamiltonian

$$H=(c^2+2b\eta ^1\eta ^2)\frac{^2}{\eta ^2\eta ^1}.$$
(81)
Following Theorem 7.1 we consider the stochastic differential equation

$$\zeta _t^a=\xi ^a+_0^t𝑑\beta _s^a(a+\frac{b}{a}\zeta _s^1\zeta _s^2).$$
(82)
Without actually solving this equation it can be seen by direct calculation (together with the anticommuting Itô isometry Proposition 5.4) that

$`𝔼_G[1]`$ $`=`$ $`1,𝔼_G[\zeta _t^a]=\xi ^a,a=1,2`$
$`\text{and}𝔼_G[\zeta _t^1\zeta _t^2]`$ $`=`$ $`\xi ^1\xi ^2e^{2bt}+{\displaystyle \frac{c^2}{2b}}\left(e^{2bt}1\right)`$ (83)
giving the action of $`e^{HT}`$ on the four elementary functions $`1`$, $`\eta ^1`$, $`\eta ^2`$, $`\eta ^1\eta ^2`$ to be

$`\mathrm{exp}Ht[1]`$ $`=`$ $`1,𝔼_G[\eta _t^a]=\eta ^a,a=1,2`$
$`\text{and}𝔼_G[\eta _t^1\eta _t^2]`$ $`=`$ $`\eta ^1\eta ^2e^{2bt}+{\displaystyle \frac{c^2}{2b}}\left(e^{2bt}1\right)`$ (84)
leading to the expression of the heat kernel as

$$e^{Ht}(\eta ,\xi )=\delta (\eta \xi )+\frac{c^2}{2b}\left(e^{2bt}1\right).$$
(85)


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Precise measurements of the charged and neutral $`B`$ meson lifetimes are needed for tests of theoretical models of heavy quark decays. An uncertainty of around 1% will be required to distinguish between models  predicting different lifetime hierarchies among the $`B`$ hadrons. The lifetimes are also required for other measurements and they provide a check of our understanding of the detector. The current world averages  for the $`B`$ lifetimes are $`\tau _{B^0}=1.548\pm 0.032`$$`\mathrm{ps}`$ and $`\tau _{B^+}=1.653\pm 0.028`$$`\mathrm{ps}`$ and for their ratio is $`\tau _{B^+}/\tau _{B^0}=1.062\pm 0.029`$.

This paper presents preliminary measurements of the $`B^\pm `$ and $`B^0`$/$`\overline{B}^0`$ lifetimes and their ratio performed with data collected by the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric $`B`$ Factory. At the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)`$, $`B`$ mesons are produced in $`B^+`$$`B^{}`$ and $`B^0\overline{B}^0`$ pairs. In this analysis, one of the $`B`$ mesons is fully reconstructed in a variety of clean hadronic two-body decay modes to charm and charmonium final states. An inclusive technique is used to reconstruct the decay vertex of the second $`B`$ in an event, and the lifetimes are determined from the distance between the decay vertices of the two $`B`$ mesons. This novel method, developed for use at an asymmetric $`B`$ Factory, deals with event topologies similar to those addressed in the analyses of $`CP`$ asymmetries where the time dependence is obtained from the distance between the two vertices. The measurement of $`B`$ lifetimes using this technique is therefore a validation of the $`CP`$ analyses. The systematic errors are quite different from previous measurements of the lifetimes and we expect substantial increases in the statistical precision in the future.

The paper is organized as follows. The method used to determine the $`B`$ meson lifetimes is outlined in Section 2. The data sample and the detector components most relevant for this measurement are reviewed in Section 3. The event selection criteria and sample composition are described next in Section 4. The determination of the distance between the decay vertices of the two $`B`$ mesons in a selected event is discussed in Section 5 together with the corresponding resolution function. The fitting procedure used to extract the $`B`$ lifetimes from the neutral and charged $`B`$ meson samples is described in Section 6. Systematic uncertainties are discussed in Section 7. The results are given at the end of the paper.

## 2 The decay length difference technique

The $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)`$ decays exclusively into pairs of charged or neutral $`B`$ mesons. At the PEP-II asymmetric $`B`$ Factory the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)`$ decay products are Lorentz boosted ($`\beta \gamma 0.56`$)111The average boost of the center of mass frame is measured on a run-by-run basis using two-prong events . and travel far enough for their flight paths ($`260`$$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$) to be comparable to the experimental resolution ($`150`$$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$). Since no charged stable particles emerge from the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)`$ decay point, the production point of the $`B`$ mesons is unknown and the $`B`$ lifetimes have to be determined solely from their decay points. The difference between the decay lengths of the two $`B`$ mesons in an event has been used for that purpose in this analysis.

Throughout the paper the signed quantity $`\mathrm{\Delta }z=z_{\mathrm{rec}}z_{\mathrm{opp}}`$ is used for the projection on the $`z`$ axis (defined below) of the decay length difference between the fully reconstructed $`B`$ meson, thereafter called $`B`$rec, and the opposed $`B`$ meson, $`B`$opp. The event topology is sketched in Fig. 1, which is not drawn to scale. In the simplified situation where the $`B`$ mesons are produced exactly at threshold and the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)`$ moves exactly along the $`z`$ axis, $`|\mathrm{\Delta }z|`$ is distributed exponentially with an average of $`|\mathrm{\Delta }z|=(\beta \gamma )_Bc\tau _B=(p_{\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)}/m_{\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)})c\tau _B`$. Complications arise from several effects. The axis of the PEP-II beams is tilted by $`20`$$`\mathrm{mr}`$ with respect to the $`z`$ axis, which is defined as parallel to the solenoidal magnetic field, and the energies of the beams fluctuate, giving the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)`$ momentum a Gaussian distribution with a standard deviation of 6$`\mathrm{MeV}/c`$. Furthermore, the energy release in the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4\mathrm{S})B\overline{B}`$ decay makes the $`B`$ mesons move in the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)`$ rest frame, resulting in a non-vanishing opening angle (smaller than $`214`$$`\mathrm{mr}`$ ) between the trajectories of the $`B`$ mesons. The latter effect has the highest impact on the $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ distribution. In practice, all of these effects are small compared to the experimental resolution on $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$.

## 3 The BABAR detector and data set

The data used in this analysis were collected by the BABAR detector at the PEP-II storage ring in the period from January to June, 2000. The total integrated luminosity of the data set is 7.4$`\text{ fb}^1`$ collected near the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)`$ resonance and 0.9$`\text{ fb}^1`$ collected 40$`\mathrm{MeV}`$ below the resonance. The corresponding number of produced $`B\overline{B}`$ pairs is estimated to be $`8.4\times 10^6`$.

The BABAR detector is described elsewhere . For this measurement, the most important subdetectors are the silicon vertex tracker (SVT) and the central drift chamber (DCH), which jointly provide charged particle tracking, and the CsI electromagnetic calorimeter (EMC), from which photons and $`\pi ^0`$s are reconstructed. The charged particle transverse momentum ($`p_T`$) resolution is approximately described by the formula $`\left(\delta p_T/p_T\right)^2=(0.0015p_T)^2+(0.005)^2`$, where $`p_T`$ is in $`\mathrm{GeV}/c`$. The SVT, with a typical single-hit resolution of 10$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$, provides vertex information in both the transverse plane and in $`z`$. The precision on charged particle momenta, neutral particle energies and spatial coordinates from the tracking and calorimetry leads to resolutions on invariant masses and other kinematical quantities which are adequate for a clean separation of the exclusive hadronic modes as described in Section 4. Impact parameter resolutions in the transverse and longitudinal coordinates are $`50`$$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ at high momentum, and better than 100$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ for $`p_T>0.6`$$`\mathrm{GeV}/c`$. The achieved precision on exclusive and inclusive vertices are given in Section 5.

Particle identification is needed for complex decay modes and $`J/\psi `$ reconstruction. Leptons and hadrons are identified using a combination of measurements from all BABAR components, including the $`\mathrm{d}E/\mathrm{d}x`$ energy loss using a truncated mean of 40 samples (maximum) in the DCH and 5 samples in the SVT. Electrons and photons are identified in the barrel and forward regions by the EMC. Muons are identified in the instrumented flux return (IFR). In the central polar angle region the Cherenkov ring imaging detector (DIRC) provides a separation better than three standard deviations between pions and kaons over the upper part of the momentum range of $`B`$ decay products (above 700$`\mathrm{MeV}/c`$) where the $`\mathrm{d}E/\mathrm{d}x`$ sensitivity vanishes.

## 4 Event selection

$`B^0`$ and $`B^+`$ mesons are reconstructed in the following hadronic modes222Throughout this paper, when a mode is quoted, its charge conjugate is implied.; $`B^0D^{()}\pi ^+`$, $`D^{()}\rho ^+`$, $`D^{()}a_1^+`$, $`J/\psi K^0`$ and $`B^+\overline{D}^{()0}\pi ^+`$, $`J/\psi K^+`$, $`\psi (2S)K^+`$. All final state particles are reconstructed. The selection criteria are devised to obtain final samples with approximately 90% purity and have been studied using the Monte Carlo simulation. Optimization for background rejection was performed using continuum data and sideband regions that do not contain signal events. The details of the selection of these events are described below.

### 4.1 Selection criteria

The basic objects used in the selection are charged tracks and neutral electromagnetic clusters. Charged tracks are built out of hits in the SVT and the DCH by a Kalman filter-based tracking algorithm . To be retained, a track must not miss the average beamspot position by more than 1.5$`\mathrm{cm}`$ in $`xy`$ and 10$`\mathrm{cm}`$ in $`z`$. Most tracks must penetrate halfway radially into the drift chamber (at least 20 hits are required) and have a momentum between 0.1 and 10$`\mathrm{GeV}/c`$. The latter restrictions do not apply to soft pions or low momentum tracks from a high multiplicity $`D`$ decay. Electromagnetic clusters in the EMC are photon candidates when they carry more than 30$`\mathrm{MeV}`$, have a narrow transverse shower profile (the lateral moment defined in Ref. ) less than 0.8 and are not matched to a charged track.

The selection procedure begins by enforcing standard criteria  on the charged multiplicity, total energy, global event vertex position and event shape which enrich the sample with multihadronic events from $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)`$ decays. A tight requirement on the normalized second Fox-Wolfram moment $`R_2(=H_2/H_0)<0.5`$ is applied in all analyses pertaining to this paper to reject jet-like events from the continuum.

The selection then proceeds by building a tree of composite objects (fast decaying particles) from tracks and photon candidates, culminating in a $`B`$ candidate if one exists in the event. Geometrical fits are used to reconstruct decay points and declared successful when the $`\chi ^2`$ probability is above 0.1%. No goodness of fit requirement is enforced for the kinematic fits used to impose mass constraints.

Neutral pion candidates are formed from pairs of photon candidates with an invariant mass within 20$`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$ of the nominal $`\pi ^0`$ mass and with a minimum energy of 200$`\mathrm{MeV}`$, except for those used in attempts to reconstruct a $`D^0`$. A kinematic fit is performed on the selected candidates imposing the $`\pi ^0`$ mass constraint.

$`K_S^0`$ candidates are reconstructed in the two charged pion decay mode only. Oppositely charged tracks are vertexed using a geometrical fit. The $`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^{}`$ invariant mass, computed at the vertex of the two tracks, has to lie between 462 and 534$`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$. The opening angle between the flight direction and the $`K_S^0`$ candidate momentum vector must be smaller than 200 $`\mathrm{mr}`$. Finally, the transverse flight distance from the event primary vertex is required to be greater than 2$`\mathrm{mm}`$.

$`K`$ and $`\pi `$ meson candidates are combined to search for the following $`D`$ meson decay modes; $`D^0K^{}\pi ^+`$, $`K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^0`$, $`K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$, $`K_S^0\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ and $`D^+K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^+`$, $`K_S^0\pi ^+`$. All kaons and the pions from two body modes are required to have a momentum above 200$`\mathrm{MeV}/c`$. This criterion is relaxed to 150$`\mathrm{MeV}/c`$ for pions from three or four body final states. Candidates with an invariant mass within three standard deviations of the known mass are retained. The standard deviation computed event by event by the tracking algorithm was used after it was verified that the normalized error distribution (pull) was correctly estimated at the 10-20% level. The reconstruction of $`D^0K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^0`$ is restricted to the dominant resonant mode $`D^0K^{}\rho ^+`$, $`\rho ^+\pi ^+\pi ^0`$. The $`\pi ^+`$$`\pi ^0`$ mass is required to lie within $`\pm 150`$$`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$ of the known $`\rho `$ mass and the $`\rho `$ decay helicity angle in its rest frame, $`\theta _\rho ^{}`$, is required to satisfy $`|\mathrm{cos}\theta _\rho ^{}|>0.4`$. All $`D`$ candidates must have a momentum greater than 1.3$`\mathrm{GeV}/c`$ in the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)`$ frame and have a successful vertex fit. The accepted $`D`$ candidates are mass constrained before they are used in subsequent intermediate state searches. Charged (neutral) $`D^{}`$ mesons are built by combining a $`D^0`$ with a soft charged (neutral) pion with momentum above 70 (100)$`\mathrm{MeV}/c`$. Constraining the vertex of the $`D^+`$ to the beamspot vertical position within 40$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ improves the resolution on the soft pion direction and hence on $`\mathrm{\Delta }m`$, the difference between the $`D^{}`$ and the $`D`$ candidate invariant masses. This procedure has been verified to be bias-free in Monte Carlo events. An acceptable range of $`\pm `$3 standard deviations around the nominal $`\mathrm{\Delta }m`$ completes the $`D^{}`$ selection. The range limits ($`\pm 1.1`$$`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$ for $`D^0K^{}\rho ^+`$, $`\pm 0.8`$$`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$ for all other $`D^+`$ modes and $`\pm 1.4`$$`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$ for the $`D^0`$) are weighted averages of the standard deviations obtained from two-Gaussian fits to the experimental $`\mathrm{\Delta }m`$ distributions.

The charmonium meson selection is the same as that described in Ref. . Leptonic decays of charmonium mesons are reconstructed from pairs of oppositely charged tracks considered either as electron or muon pairs. At least one decay product must be positively identified as a lepton. For an electron inside the EMC acceptance, this means a positive electromagnetic shower signature, otherwise that the measured $`\mathrm{d}E/\mathrm{d}x`$ be consistent with the electron hypothesis. For muon pairs, the second track has to be minimum ionizing in the EMC. In the electron case, when both tracks are inside the EMC acceptance and are such that $`E/p>0.5`$, where $`E`$ is the energy measured in the EMC and $`p`$ is the momentum obtained from the tracking, bremsstrahlung photons found in the EMC are combined with the tracks to reconstruct the electrons prior to radiation. $`J/\psi e^+e^{}`$ ($`\mu ^+\mu ^{}`$) candidates must have an invariant mass between 2.95 (3.06) and 3.14$`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$. The invariant mass of the $`\psi (2S)\mu ^+\mu ^{}`$ candidates is required to be within 50$`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$ of the known $`\psi (2S)`$ mass, but a less stringent lower limit of 200$`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$ is imposed for $`\psi (2S)e^+e^{}`$ candidates. $`\psi (2S)J/\psi \pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ decays are also reconstructed by combining oppositely charged pions with mass-constrained $`J/\psi `$ candidates and selecting the $`\psi (2S)`$ invariant mass between 3.1 and 4.0$`\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$ and the $`\psi (2S)J/\psi `$ mass difference in a window of $`\pm 15`$$`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$ around the nominal value.

$`B`$ candidates are formed by combining a $`D^{}`$, $`D`$, $`J/\psi `$ or $`\psi (2S)`$ candidate with a $`\pi ^+`$, $`\rho ^+`$, $`a_1^+`$, $`K^0`$ or $`K^+`$ candidate having a minimum momentum of 500$`\mathrm{MeV}/c`$ in the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)`$ frame. For $`B^0D^{()}\rho ^+`$, the $`\pi ^0`$ meson from the $`\rho ^+`$ decay is required to have an energy higher than 300$`\mathrm{MeV}`$. For $`B^0D^{()}a_1^+`$, the $`a_1^+`$ meson, selected by combining three charged pions, must have an invariant mass between 1.0 and 1.6$`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$ and a successful vertex fit.

Kaon identification is used to reject background at the price of some loss in reconstruction efficiency. For most of the $`B^0`$ modes, a loose kaon selection, or no selection, is enough to reduce the background level to the required level. Tighter kaon identification is mandatory only for modes with high combinatorial background, such as $`B^0D^{}a_1^+`$.

Finally, to achieve the required high signal to background ratio, stricter requirements on event shape variables are applied. A selection is performed on the angle, $`\theta _T`$, between two thrust axes, namely the thrust axis computed from the tracks of the $`B`$ meson candidate and the thrust axis of all the other charged tracks and neutral clusters in the event. A flat distribution is expected for $`B`$ meson pairs while continuum events tend to peak at $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _T=\pm 1`$. For the $`BD^{}\rho `$ modes, $`|\mathrm{cos}\theta _T|`$ is required to be less than 0.9 for the $`D^0K^{}\pi ^+`$ and $`K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^0`$ channels and less than 0.8 for $`D^0K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ and $`K_S^0\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$. The requirements are 0.8 and 0.7 for the $`B^0D^{}a_1^+`$ modes and the same two couples of $`D`$ modes. There is no restriction based on thrust for the $`BD^{}\pi ^+`$ decays. For the $`B^0`$ decaying to charged $`D`$ mesons, the requirements are 0.9, 0.8 and 0.7, if the $`D^{}`$ is accompanied by a $`\pi ^+`$, a $`\rho ^+`$ or an $`a_1^+`$. For the $`B^{}D^{()0}\pi ^{}`$ decays, $`|\mathrm{cos}\theta _T|`$ is required to be less than 0.9 in the case of the $`D^0K^{}\pi ^+`$ decay and to be less than 0.8 in all other cases. The requirement is 0.9 for the $`B`$ decays to charmonium.

### 4.2 Sample composition

Signals for each decay mode in the selected sample are isolated by analyzing the two-dimensional distribution of the kinematical variables, $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ and $`m_{\mathrm{ES}}`$, which have an intuitive meaning in the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)`$ rest frame. $`\mathrm{\Delta }E=E_{\mathrm{rec}}^{}E_b^{}`$ is the difference of the $`B`$ candidate energy and the beam energy. $`m_{\mathrm{ES}}=\sqrt{E_b^2𝒑_{\mathrm{rec}}^2}`$ is the mass of a particle with a reconstructed momentum $`𝒑_{\mathrm{rec}}^{}=_i𝒑_i^{}`$ assumed to have the beam energy, as is the case for a true $`B`$ meson. Candidates with $`5.2<m_{\mathrm{ES}}<5.3`$$`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$ and $`\left|\mathrm{\Delta }E\right|<140`$$`\mathrm{MeV}`$ are considered in further analyses. In case an event has several $`B`$ candidates, only the one with the smallest $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ is kept. The $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ and $`m_{\mathrm{ES}}`$ variables are essentially uncorrelated. The resolution on $`m_{\mathrm{ES}}`$ is about 3$`\mathrm{MeV}/c^2`$ and is dominated by the energy spread of the beams, inherent to the collider. The resolution on $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ varies from mode to mode between 12 and 40$`\mathrm{MeV}`$. For each mode a rectangular signal region is defined by the three standard deviation bands in $`m_{\mathrm{ES}}`$ ($`5.27<m_{\mathrm{ES}}<5.29`$$`\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$) and $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ (an interval which depends on the mode).

For each mode, the sample composition was determined by fitting the $`m_{\mathrm{ES}}`$ distribution, for candidates within the signal region in $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$, to the sum of a single Gaussian representing the signal and a background function used by the ARGUS collaboration . The purity of each subsample is computed as the ratio of the area of the Gaussian in the $`\pm 3\sigma `$ range over the total area in this range. The results are summarized in Table 1. Figure 2 shows the $`m_{\mathrm{ES}}`$ distributions for the summed hadronic $`B^0`$ and $`B^+`$ modes with the fits superimposed.

To extract separately the $`B^0`$ and $`B^+`$ lifetimes, a thorough understanding of the background shape and composition is necessary. In the signal region, the background receives contributions from continuum, $`B^0\overline{B}^0`$ and $`B^+B^{}`$ pairs in various proportions for the different modes. A consistent background shape is found from studies of several samples; namely, on-resonance data events outside the signal region, off-resonance data, and generic $`B\overline{B}`$ and continuum Monte Carlo samples. The contamination of the $`B^+`$$`B^{}`$ subsamples by $`B^0\overline{B}^0`$ events, and vice versa, is found to be small.

## 5 Vertex reconstruction and resolution function

To extract the $`B`$ meson lifetimes from the sample, the separate decay vertices have to be identified and the distance between them along the $`z`$ axis, $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$, evaluated. The resolution function for $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ is the most critical ingredient of this analysis as the width of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ distribution is due to the combined effect of the $`B`$ lifetime and the detector resolution.

A geometric and kinematic fit of the fully reconstructed $`B_{\mathrm{rec}}`$ is performed and is required to converge. The masses of $`D`$ and $`J/\psi `$ resonances are fixed at the nominal values . Furthermore, the vertices of short-living resonances are constrained to be identical to the $`B`$ vertex. Two-Gaussian fits adequately describe the error distributions of the full Monte Carlo simulation used to model the signal events, with standard deviations ranging from 45 to 65$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ and normalized fluctuations (called pulls in the rest of the paper) around 1.1.

The vertex of the other $`B`$ is determined via an inclusive and iterative procedure applied to all the tracks that are not associated with the $`B_{\mathrm{rec}}`$. To avoid biases from long-lived particles such as neutral strange particles decaying to two charged prongs (a topology known as a V0 decay), as many V0 decays as possible are reconstructed and subsequently treated as single tracks. A common vertex is then fitted using all tracks including the $`B_{\mathrm{opp}}`$ “pseudotrack” which is obtained from the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)`$ decay kinematics using the $`B_{\mathrm{rec}}`$ and the beamspot. The procedure is repeated, after removing tracks and V0 decays which result in poor fits, until stability is achieved. The algorithm is highly efficient and successful in minimizing biases due to the secondary charm decays of the $`B_{\mathrm{opp}}`$. From the weighed means of two-Gaussian fits to Monte Carlo distributions of the residuals, one standard deviation errors of the order of 115$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ and biases around 25$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ are obtained. Although still present, the bias due to the charm particle lifetime is kept small.

With both vertices reconstructed, the decay length difference $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ is obtained. The Monte Carlo simulation was used to study the $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ resolution function $``$ as a function of two variables, the residual $`\delta (\mathrm{\Delta }z)=(\mathrm{\Delta }z)_{\mathrm{rec}}(\mathrm{\Delta }z)_{\mathrm{generated}}`$ and the pull $`\delta (\mathrm{\Delta }z)/\sigma (\mathrm{\Delta }z)`$. Figure 3 presents the distributions for the decay $`B^+J/\psi K^+`$. Two-Gaussian fits successfully describe the Monte Carlo residual and pull distributions. They give a one standard deviation width of $`130\pm 1`$$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ and a bias of $`24.5\pm 1`$$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ for the residual. The corresponding values for the pull are $`1.21\pm 0.01`$ and $`0.29\pm 0.01`$ respectively. As expected their widths are dominated by the $`B_{\mathrm{opp}}`$ vertex errors. Tails remain due to charm decays of the $`B_{\mathrm{opp}}`$. Because it is governed by the $`B_{\mathrm{opp}}`$ vertex, the resolution function shape is the same for all modes and also for neutral and charged $`B`$ mesons. These comparisons are summarized in Table 2.

A common $``$ function can be used for all modes. The shape of the resolution function can be fit with several parametrizations. Results for the pull representation (which is used in the likelihood function of the lifetime fit) are summarized in Table 3. It can be seen that a single Gaussian is too simple whereas a two-Gaussian line shape $`G+G`$ fits adequately. A fair agreement is also obtained with a function of the form $`G+GE`$, the sum of an unbiased Gaussian $`G`$ and of the convolution of the same Gaussian with a decaying exponential $`E`$, as can be seen in Fig. 4.

In a higher statistics Monte Carlo study, tails become apparent which cannot be reproduced by any of the parametrizations considered above. These “outlier” events in the tail are bound to bias the lifetime measurement if they are not accounted for in the fit. Some are due to long lived strange particles forming a vertex with, e.g., the $`B_{\mathrm{opp}}`$ pseudotrack which is robust enough to survive the iterative vertex finding algorithm. To eliminate outliers, a requirement of a minimum of two real tracks to form the $`B_{\mathrm{opp}}`$ vertex, $`|\mathrm{\Delta }z|<3000`$$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ and $`\sigma (\mathrm{\Delta }z)<400`$$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ is imposed. There remain $`1752\pm 46`$ ($`1879\pm 45`$) signal events in the neutral (charged) $`B`$ lifetime samples after the selection.

The distribution of $`\sigma (\mathrm{\Delta }z)`$ can be fitted to a Crystal Ball line shape function . The fitted function is denoted $`\rho (\sigma )`$. Use of that spectrum with the pull representation of the resolution function provides an elegant way of implementing the lifetime fits as explained in Section 6.

Figure 5 shows the $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ distributions in the data for candidates satisfying $`m_{\mathrm{ES}}>5.27`$$`\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$. Superimposed are the Monte Carlo simulation predictions using the central values of the lifetimes of the $`B`$ mesons from Ref. .

## 6 Lifetime fits

The $`B`$ meson lifetimes are extracted from the $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ distributions of the selected events with an unbinned maximum likelihood fit. The measurements performed on each event $`i`$ are represented by three input numbers: $`(\mathrm{\Delta }z)_i`$, its error, $`\sigma _i`$, and $`p_{\mathrm{sig},i}`$. All events which satisfy $`5.2<m_{\mathrm{ES}}<5.3`$$`\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$ and have $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ in the signal region are input to the fit. $`p_{\mathrm{sig},i}`$ is the probability for an event $`i`$ to come from signal. This probability is obtained from the independent fit of the $`m_{\mathrm{ES}}`$ spectrum using the ARGUS background function and a single Gaussian, as described previously (see Fig. 2). The fit determines the $`B`$ lifetime, $`\tau _B`$, the proportion of outliers, $`p_{\mathrm{out}}`$, and the two sets of parameters $`\theta _{\mathrm{resol}}`$ and $`\theta _{\mathrm{bkg}}`$ which describe the resolution function and the background shape, respectively.

The total probability density function (PDF) for an event $`i`$, $`𝒯_i`$, is the sum of three terms describing the signal, the background and the outliers,

$$𝒯_i=\rho (\sigma _i)\times \left[p_{\mathrm{sig},i}𝒮((\mathrm{\Delta }z)_i,\sigma _i;\tau _B,\theta _{\mathrm{resol}})+(1p_{\mathrm{sig},i}p_{\mathrm{out}})((\mathrm{\Delta }z)_i;\theta _{\mathrm{bkg}})+p_{\mathrm{out}}𝒪((\mathrm{\Delta }z)_i)\right].$$

The signal PDF, $`𝒮`$, is the result of a convolution of the theoretical $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ distribution (two exponential wings) and the pull representation of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ resolution function. Three or five resolution parameters, $`\theta _{\mathrm{resol}}`$, (depending on which parameterization is chosen for $``$, $`G+G`$ or $`G+GE`$) are used to model the width and non-Gaussian tails. The parameters are free in the lifetime fit, i.e. the values of the parameters of the resolution function are extracted from the data themselves. Reducing the number of parameters modeling $``$, which are unavoidably correlated to $`\tau _B`$, has the effect of improving the statistical precision on the lifetime. The parameterization needs to be flexible enough to reproduce all features of the resolution function, however. The optimal choice depends on the statistics available.

The events in the substituted mass sideband carry most information on the background $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ distribution. A satisfactory description of this distribution is given by a function adding a single Gaussian and two independent exponential tails for the negative and positive $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ ranges. This parameterization uses six free parameters $`\theta _{\mathrm{bkg}}`$: the width and mean of the Gaussian, the “lifetimes” of the two exponentials and the fraction of events in each of the exponentials. Such a shape is flexible enough to account for the combinatorial background with continuum and $`B\overline{B}`$ contributions.

The outlier PDF, $`𝒪`$, is a single wide Gaussian with a fixed width of 2500$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ and a fixed mean of zero.

A full Monte Carlo sample with 5000 events in the channel $`B^0D^{}\pi ^+`$, $`D^{}K^+\pi ^{}\pi ^{}`$ was used to compare different parameterizations of the resolution function (see Table 3) which were injected into signal-only lifetime fits. The $`G+G`$ model of the resolution function gives an unbiased result but the statistical error on the lifetime is increased by more than 50% compared to the case of a fixed $``$. The single Gaussian model is both biased (overestimation of $``$ 1.5%) and gives a 30% increase of the statistical error. The $`G+GE`$ is intermediate with a 0.3% overestimation of $`\tau _B`$ and the smallest increase of the statistical error (10%). With the present statistics, the $`G+GE`$ model of $``$ lead to the smallest overall error. With high statistics, the $`G+G`$ model will become the optimum method.

To determine the $`B`$ lifetimes, a combined fit to the $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ distributions of the $`B^0`$ and $`B^+`$ samples is performed. The two $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ distributions are not combined but are fitted simultaneously, with different sets of parameters (one per charge) to describe the lifetime, the background and the outliers. Since the resolution functions for neutral and charged $`B`$ mesons are compatible, a single set of parameters is used to describe the resolution function for both samples. The result of the fit is

$`\tau _{B^0}`$ $`=`$ $`1.512\pm 0.052\mathrm{ps},`$
$`\tau _{B^+}`$ $`=`$ $`1.608\pm 0.049\mathrm{ps},`$
where the errors are statistical only. The lifetime fit results are superimposed upon the $`B^0`$ and $`B^+`$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ distributions from the $`B`$ reconstruction signal region in Figs. 6 and 7. The lifetime ratio is determined with a similar combined fit, this time to the $`B^0`$ lifetime and the ratio, which results in a value of

$$\tau _{B^+}/\tau _{B^0}=1.065\pm 0.044,$$

where, again, the error is statistical only. The final results after corrections described in the section on systematic errors are applied, are quoted in section 8.

## 7 Systematic uncertainties

The systematic errors associated with event selection, $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ measurement and lifetime fitting are discussed in turn.

It has been verified, using the $`B^0`$ and $`B^+`$ Monte Carlo samples, that the event selection does not distort the generated $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ distribution so that the lifetime measured from these samples is consistent with the input value. These checks are done with a limited number of simulated events which results in a statistical error on the lifetimes extracted from the fit. This Monte Carlo statistical error of 1.0% for $`B^0`$ and 0.9% for $`B^+`$ is taken as a systematic error on the lifetime measurements, labeled as “MC statistics” in Table 4.

The $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ resolution function $``$ is a key ingredient of the lifetime measurements. The parameters describing $``$ are results of the fit. Since they are correlated with the lifetime, part of the systematic error which comes from their uncertainty is transferred into the statistical error on the lifetime. This effect is estimated to be about 2%. For the systematic error associated with the resolution function modeling, two contributions are quoted. One is the difference between lifetimes obtained with fits using the $`G+G`$ and $`G+GE`$ parametrizations, a 0.3% effect. The other, at the level of 0.3% as well, is an overestimation of the distortion which may result from the simplifying assumption that a unique resolution function is suitable for all the modes.

The sensitivity of the lifetime measurement to quantities which enter into the determination of the $`B_{\mathrm{opp}}`$ vertex, namely the beam spot position and vertical size, and the $`B_{\mathrm{rec}}`$ momentum vector has been found to be negligible.

The fit accounts for outlier events via a wide Gaussian function with fixed mean and width. Increasing the width from 2500 to 4000$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ gives a change of 1.1% (1.3%) to the $`B^0`$ ($`B^+`$) lifetimes. A change of 1000$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ in the mean gives an effect smaller by a factor three.

The effects of the detector geometry and alignment have been studied. These are smaller than the effects due to the charm lifetimes, and both parameterizations of the resolution function are flexible enough to accommodate small changes in the detector response. The associated systematic errors are included in those given for the resolution function model.

An overestimation of the uncertainty on the length scale measured along $`z`$ has been obtained in considering the mechanical integrity of the SVT. A systematic error of 1% is assumed. Actual measurements of the length of the beam pipe with tracks are in progress and should considerably reduce this contribution to the error.

Systematic effects due to the boost enter due to the approximation of using the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)`$ boost for both $`B`$ mesons in an event, as well as measurement error on the boost itself. The effect of the approximation is estimated to be a 0.4% shift and the measurement error from two-prong events is 0.3%. The central values for the lifetimes obtained from the fit are corrected for this shift and a conservative error of 0.4% is assigned. Adding the two contributions in quadrature, the systematic error due to the boost effects is 0.5%.

The systematic error due to the signal probability, $`p_{\mathrm{sig}}`$, is obtained by propagating the one standard deviation errors on the parameters of the line shape function to the lifetime. A 0.2% uncertainty is obtained.

The uncertainty in modeling the background is estimated by comparing the Monte Carlo distributions for the background in the signal region with the $`m_{\mathrm{ES}}`$ sideband, and also comparing $`m_{\mathrm{ES}}`$ sidebands in data and Monte Carlo simulation. The disagreement is more pronounced for $`B^+`$ mesons (1.1%) than for $`B^0`$ mesons (0.4%).

The stability of the results has been checked by splitting the data sample into subsamples of different $`B_{\mathrm{rec}}`$ modes and different times of data taking. A summary of all systematic errors as well as their sum in quadrature is given in Table 4.

## 8 Summary

The preliminary results for the $`B`$ meson lifetimes are

$`\tau _{B^0}`$ $`=`$ $`1.506\pm 0.052(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.029(\mathrm{syst})\mathrm{ps},`$
$`\tau _{B^+}`$ $`=`$ $`1.602\pm 0.049(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.035(\mathrm{syst})\mathrm{ps}`$
and for their ratio is

$$\tau _{B^+}/\tau _{B^0}=1.065\pm 0.044(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.021(\mathrm{syst}).$$

These results are consistent with previous $`B`$ lifetime measurements  and competitive with the most precise ones. The statistical errors dominate the uncertainties, while the systematic uncertainty on the lifetime ratio is smaller than the overall error of the world average for this quantity. There are ways to reduce some contributions; however, to reach a 1% total error on the $`B`$ lifetime ratio remains a challenge.

## 9 Acknowledgments

We are grateful for the contributions of our PEP-II colleagues in achieving the excellent luminosity and machine conditions that have made this work possible. We acknowledge support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada), Institute of High Energy Physics (China), Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique and Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules (France), Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (Germany), Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (Italy), The Research Council of Norway, Ministry of Science and Technology of the Russian Federation, Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (United Kingdom), the Department of Energy (US), and the National Science Foundation (US). In addition, individual support has been received from the Swiss National Foundation, the A. P. Sloan Foundation, the Research Corporation, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The visiting groups wish to thank SLAC for the support and kind hospitality extended to them.