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Concept
D meson
Summary
The D mesons are the lightest particle containing charm quarks. They are often studied to gain knowledge on the weak interaction. The strange D mesons (Ds) were called "F mesons" prior to 1986.
The D mesons were discovered in 1976 by the Mark I detector at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
Since the D mesons are the lightest mesons containing a single charm quark (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 weak interaction. 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 (_Kaon) and pions (_Pion).
‡ PDG reports the resonance width Here the conversion is given instead.
In 2021 it was confirmed with a significance of more than seven standard deviations, that the neutral _D0 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.
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