Observation and study of the baryonic B-meson decays B→D (*) pp̄(π)(π)
We present results for B-meson decay modes involving a charm meson, protons, and pions using 455×10⁶ BB¯¯¯ pairs recorded by the BaBar detector at the SLAC PEP-II asymmetric-energy e⁺e⁻ collider. The branching fractions are measured for the following ten decays: B¯¯¯⁰→D⁰pp̄, B¯¯¯⁰→D*⁰pp̄, B¯¯¯⁰→D⁺pp̄π⁻, B¯¯¯⁰→D*⁺pp̄π⁻, B⁻→D⁰pp̄π⁻, B⁻→D*⁰pp̄π⁻, B¯¯¯⁰→D⁰pp̄π⁻π⁺, B¯¯¯⁰→D*⁰pp̄π⁻π⁺, B⁻→D⁺pp̄π⁻π⁻, and B⁻→D*⁺pp̄π⁻π⁻. The four B⁻ and the two five-body B¯¯¯⁰ modes are observed for the first time. The four-body modes are enhanced compared to the three- and the five-body modes. In the three-body modes, the M(pp̄) and M(D(*)⁰p) invariant-mass distributions show enhancements near threshold values. In the four-body mode B¯¯¯⁰→D⁺pp̄π⁻, the M(pπ⁻) distribution shows a narrow structure of unknown origin near 1.5 GeV/c². The distributions for the five-body modes, in contrast to the others, are similar to the expectations from uniform phase-space predictions.