Measurement of branching fraction ratios and CP asymmetries in B &#8594D0 CPK decays with the BABAR detector

The primary goals of the BABAR experiment are the detection of CP violation (CPV) in the B meson system, the precise measurement of some of the elements of the CKM matrix and the measurement of the rates of rare B meson decays. At present, BABAR has achieved major successes: (1) the discovery, in neutral B decays, of direct and mixing-induced CP violation; (2) accurate measurements of the magnitudes of the CKM matrix elements |V{sub cb}| and |V{sub ub}|; (3) a precise measurement of the CKM parameter {beta} {triple_bond} arg[- V{sub cd}V*{sub cb}/V{sub td}V*{sub tb}]; (4) a first measurement of the CKM parameters {alpha} {triple_bond} arg[- V{sub td}V*{sub tb}/V{sub ud}V*{sub ub}], {gamma} {triple_bond} arg[- V{sub ud}V*{sub ub}/V{sub cd}V*{sub cb}]; and (5) the observation of several rare B decays and the discovery of new particles (in the charmed and charmonium mesons spectroscopy). However, the physics program of BABAR is not yet complete. Two of the key elements of this program that still need to be achieved are: (1) the observation of direct CP violation in charged B decays, which would constitute the first evidence of direct CPV in a charged meson decay; and (2) the precise measurement of {alpha} and {gamma}, which are necessary ingredients for a stringent test of the Standard Model predictions in the quark electroweak sector. A possibility for the discovery of direct CP violation in charged B decays would be the observation of a non-vanishing rate asymmetry in the Cabibbo-suppressed decay B{sup -} {yields} D{sup 0} K{sup -}, with the D{sup 0} decaying to either a CP-even or a CP-odd eigenstate. This class of decays can also provide theoretically-clean information on {gamma}