Observation and study of baryonic B decays: B -> D(*) p pbar, D(*) p pbar pi, and D(*) p pbar pi pi

We present a study of ten B-meson decays to a D{sup (*)}, a proton-antiproton pair, and a system of up to two pions using BABAR's data set of 455 x 10{sup 6} B{bar B} pairs. Four of the modes {bar B}{sup 0} {yields} D{sup 0}p{bar p}, {bar B}{sup 0} {yields} D*{sup 0}p{bar p}, {bar B}{sup 0} {yields} D{sup +}p{bar p}{pi}{sup -}, {bar B}{sup 0} {yields} D{sup ast+}p{bar p}{pi}{sup -} are studied with improved statistics compared to previous measurements; six of the modes (B{sup -} {yields} D{sup 0}p{bar p}{pi}{sup -}, B{sup -} {yields} D*{sup 0}p{bar p}{pi}{sup -}, {bar B}{sup 0} {yields} D{sup 0}p{bar p}{pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup +}, {bar B}{sup 0} {yields} D*{sup 0}p{bar p}{pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup +}, B{sup -} {yields} D{sup +}p{bar p}{pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup -}, B{sup -} {yields} D{sup ast+}p{bar p}{pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup -}) are first observations. The branching fractions for 3- and 5-body decays are suppressed compared to 4-body decays. Kinematic distributions for 3-body decays show non-overlapping threshold enhancements in m(p{bar p}) and m(D{sup (*)0}p) in the Dalitz plots. For 4-body decays, m(p{pi}{sup -}) mass projections show a narrow peak with mass and full width of (1497.4 {+-} 3.0 {+-} 0.9)MeV/c{sup 2} and (47 {+-} 12 {+-} 4)MeV/c{sup 2}, respectively, where the firstmore » (second) errors are statistical (systematic). For 5-body decays, mass projections are similar to phase space expectations. All results are preliminary.« less