Measurement of branching fraction and direct CP asymmetry in charmless B+→K+K−π+ decays at Belle

We report a study of the charmless hadronic decay of the charged B meson to the three-body final state K+K−π+. The results are based on a data sample that contains 772×106 BB¯ pairs collected at the ϒ(4S) resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy e+e− collider. The measured inclusive branching fraction and direct CP asymmetry are (5.38±0.40±0.35)×10−6 and −0.170±0.073±0.017, respectively, where the first uncertainties are statistical and the second are systematic. The K+K− invariant mass distribution of the signal candidates shows an excess in the region below 1.5 GeV/c2, which is consistent with the previous studies from BABAR and LHCb. In addition, strong evidence of a large direct CP asymmetry is found in the low K+K− invariant-mass region.