Study of charmonium production in -hadron decays and first evidence for the decay

Using decays to -meson pairs, the inclusive production of charmonium states in -hadron decays is studied with pp collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of , collected by the LHCb experiment at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV. Denoting by the inclusive branching fraction of a hadron to a charmonium state C that decays into a pair of mesons, ratios are determined as , , , , and . Here and below the first uncertainties are statistical and the second systematic. Upper limits at 90% confidence level for the inclusive production of X (3872), X (3915) and states are obtained as , and . Differential cross-sections as a function of transverse momentum are measured for the and states. The branching fraction of the decay is measured for the first time, . Here the third uncertainty is due to the branching fraction of the decay , which is used for normalization. No evidence for intermediate resonances is seen. A preferentially transverse polarization is observed. The measurements allow the determination of the ratio of the branching fractions for the decays to and as .