Observation of the electromagnetic doubly OZI-suppressed decay $J/psi rightarrow phi pi^{0}$

Using a sample of $1.31$ billion $J/psi$ events accumulated with the BESIII detector at the BEPCII collider, we report the observation of the decay $J/psi rightarrow phipi^{0}$, which is the first evidence for a doubly Okubo-Zweig-Iizuka suppressed electromagnetic $J/psi$ decay. A clear structure is observed in the $K^{+} K^{-}$ mass spectrum around 1.02 GeV/$c^2$, which can be attributed to interference between $J/psi rightarrow phipi^{0}$ and $J/psi rightarrow K^{+}K^{-}pi^{0}$ decays. Due to this interference, two possible solutions are found. The corresponding measured values of the branching fraction of $J/psi to phipi^{0}$ are $[2.94 pm 0.16text{(stat.)} pm 0.16text{(syst.)}] times 10^{-6}$ and $[1.24 pm 0.33text{(stat.)} pm 0.30text{(syst.)}] times 10^{-7}$.