Measurement of branching fraction and direct CP asymmetry in charmless B+ -> K+ K- pi(+) 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-pi(+). The results are based on a data sample that contains 772 x 10(6) B (B) over bar pairs collected at the Y (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) x 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/c(2), 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.