First Measurement of the Absolute Branching Fraction of $η_c \to γγ$

Abstract

We apply a tag-and-probe method to precisely measure the absolute branching fraction of the decay $η_c \to γγ$ with the BESIII experiment at BEPCII. Starting with a large initial sample of $2712.4\pm 14.3$ million $ψ(3686)$ events, a sample of 0.16 million $η_c$ events are tagged via the golden channel $ψ(3686)\to π^0 h_c$, $h_c\to γη_c$, effectively avoiding interference effects. The absolute branching fraction of $η_c \to γγ$ is measured for the first time to be $\mathcal{B}(η_c \to γγ) = (2.45 \pm 0.48_{\rm stat.} \pm 0.09_{\rm syst.}) \times 10^{-4}$. Using the world average value of the total width of the $η_c$, the partial decay width of $η_c \to γγ$ is calculated to be $Γ(η_c \to γγ) = (7.48 \pm 1.48_{\rm stat.} \pm 0.30_{\rm syst.})~{\rm keV}$.