Observation of the decay B+-> K+K-pi(+)

Abstract

We report the observation of charmless hadronic decays of charged B mesons to the final state K+K-pi(+). Using a data sample of 347.5 fb(-1) collected at the Upsilon(4S) resonance with the BABAR detector, we observe 429 +/- 43 signal events with a significance of 9.6 sigma. We measure the inclusive branching fraction B(B+-> K+K-pi(+))=[5.0 +/- 0.5(stat)+/- 0.5(syst)]x10(-6). Inspection of the Dalitz plot of signal candidates shows a broad structure peaking near 1.5 GeV/c(2) in the K+K- invariant mass distribution. We find the direct CP asymmetry to be consistent with zero