Precise Measurement of the e+ e- --> pi+ pi- (gamma) Cross Section with the Initial-State Radiation Method at BABAR

A precise measurement of the cross section of the process $e^+e^-topi^+pi^-(gamma)$ from threshold to an energy of 3GeV is obtained with the initial-state radiation (ISR) method using 232fb$^{-1}$ of data collected with the BaBar detector at $e^+e^-$ center-of-mass energies near 10.6GeV. The ISR luminosity is determined from a study of the leptonic process $e^+e^-tomu^+mu^-(gamma)gamma_{rm ISR}$, which is found to agree with the next-to-leading-order QED prediction to within 1.1%. The cross section for the process $e^+e^-topi^+pi^-(gamma)$ is obtained with a systematic uncertainty of 0.5% in the dominant $rho$ resonance region. The leading-order hadronic contribution to the muon magnetic anomaly calculated using the measured $pipi$ cross section from threshold to 1.8GeV is $(514.1 pm 2.2({rm stat}) pm 3.1({rm syst}))times 10^{-10}$.

Observation of the rare decay B+->K+pi0pi0 and measurement of the quasi-two body contributions B+->K*(892)+pi0, B+->f0(980)K+ and B+->chic0K+

We report an analysis of the charmless hadronic decays of charged B meson to the final state K+pi0pi0, using a data sample of 470+/-2.8 million BBbar events collected at the Y(4S) resonance. We observe an excess of signal events, with a significance above 10 standard deviations including systematic uncertainties, and measure the branching fraction and CP asymmetry to be B(B+->K+pi0pi0)=(16.2+/-1.2+/-1.5)x10^-6 and A_CP(B+->K+pi0pi0)=-0.06+/-0.06+/-0.04, where the uncertainties are statistical and systematic respectively. Additionally we study the contributions of the B+->K*(892)+pi0, B+->f0(980)K+ and B+->chic0K+ quasi-two body decays. We report the worlds best measurements of the branching fractions and CP asymmetry of the B+->K+pi0pi0 and B+->K*(892)+pi0 channels.