The D mesons are the lightest particle containing charm quarks. They are often studied to gain knowledge on the

weak interaction In nuclear physics and particle physics, the weak interaction, weak force or the weak nuclear force, is one of the four known fundamental interactions, with the others being electromagnetism, the strong interaction, and gravitation. It is th ...

. The strange D

mesons In particle physics, a meson () is a type of hadronic subatomic particle composed of an equal number of quarks and antiquarks, usually one of each, bound together by the strong interaction. Because mesons are composed of quark subparticles, the ...

(D_s) were called "F mesons" prior to 1986.

Overview

The D mesons were discovered in 1976 by the Mark I detector at the

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in Menlo Park, California, Menlo Park, Ca ...

. Since the D mesons are the lightest mesons containing a single charm

quark A quark () is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nucleus, atomic nuclei ...

(or antiquark), they must change the charm (anti)quark into an (anti)quark of another type to decay. Such transitions involve a change of the internal charm quantum number, and can take place only via the

. In D mesons, the charm quark preferentially changes into a strange quark via an exchange of a W particle, therefore the D meson preferentially decays into kaons () and

pion In particle physics, a pion (, ) or pi meson, denoted with the Greek alphabet, Greek letter pi (letter), pi (), is any of three subatomic particles: , , and . Each pion consists of a quark and an antiquark and is therefore a meson. Pions are the ...

s ().

List of D mesons

‡ PDG reports the resonance width

~\left(\Gamma\right)~.

Here the conversion

\; \tau = \frac \;

is given instead.

CP violation

In 2019, an analysis by the LHCb experiment reported the first observation of CP violation in the decays of the neutral meson, with a significance of over five standard deviations. The results of a subsequent data analysis by the same collaboration was presented in 2022, which announced that they found evidence of direct CP violation in the decay of the meson into

– oscillations

In 2021 it was confirmed with a significance of more than seven standard deviations, that the neutral meson spontaneously transforms into its own antiparticle and back. This phenomenon is called flavor oscillation and was prior known to exist in the neutral K meson and B meson.

References

{{Authority control Mesons

Overview

List of D mesons

CP violation

– oscillations

See also

References