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 $$ .