Measurement of the branching fraction and CP-violating asymmetries in neutral $B$ decays to $D^{*\pm} D^\mp$

The authors present measurements of the branching fraction and CP-violating asymmetries for neutral B decays to D*{sup {+-}} D{sup {-+}}. The measurement uses a data sample for approximately 88 million {Upsilon}(4S) {yields} B{bar B} decays collected with the BABAR detector at the SLAC PEP-II asymmetric-energy B factory. They measure the branching fraction to be (8.8 {+-} 1.0 {+-} 1.3) x 10{sup -4} and the time-integrated CP-violating asymmetry between the rates to D*{sup -} D{sup +} and D*{sup +} D{sup -} to be {Alpha} = -0.03 {+-} 0.11 {+-} 0.05. They also measure the time-dependent CP-violating asymmetry parameters to be S{sub -+} = -0.24 {+-} 0.69 {+-} 0.12, C{sub -+} = -0.22 {+-} 0.37 {+-} 0.10 for B {yields} D*{sup -} D{sup +} and S{sub +-} = -0.82 {+-} 0.75 {+-} 0.14, C{sub +-} = -0.47 {+-} 0.40 {+-} 0.12 for B {yields} D*{sup +} D{sup -}. In each case the first error is statistical and the second error is systematic.