Measurement of the absolute branching fractions B -> D pi, D-*pi, D-**pi with a missing mass method

We present branching fraction measurements of charged and neutral B decays to D pi(-), D-*pi(-), and "D-**"pi(-) with a missing mass method, based on a sample of 231x10(6) Upsilon(4S)-> B (B) over bar pairs collected by the BABAR detector at the PEP-II e(+)e(-) collider. One of the B mesons is fully reconstructed and the other one decays to a reconstructed charged pi and a companion charmed meson identified by its recoil mass, inferred by kinematics. Here "D-**" refers to the sum of all the nonstrange charm meson states with masses in the range 2.2-2.8 GeV/c(2). We measure the branching fractions: B(B--> D-0 pi(-))=(4.49 +/- 0.21 +/- 0.23)x10(-3), B(B--> D-*0 pi(-))=(5.13 +/- 0.22 +/- 0.28)x10(-3), B(B-->"D-**0"pi(-))=(5.50 +/- 0.52 +/- 1.04)x10(-3), B((B) over bar (0)-> D+pi(-))=(3.03 +/- 0.23 +/- 0.23)x10(-3), B((B) over bar (0)-> D*+pi(-))=(2.99 +/- 0.23 +/- 0.24)x10(-3), B((B) over bar (0)->"D**+"pi(-))=(2.34 +/- 0.65 +/- 0.88)x10(-3), and their ratios.