Search for W Boson Decays to Three Charged Pions

Abstract

For the first time, a search for the rare decay of the \(W\) boson to three charged pions has been performed. Proton-proton collision data recorded by the CMS experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of \(77.3\text{}\text{}{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}\), have been analyzed. No significant excess is observed above the background expectation. An upper limit of \(1.01×{10}^{-6}\) is set at 95% confidence level on the branching fraction of the \(W\) boson to three charged pions. This provides a strong motivation for theoretical calculations of this branching fraction.