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D meson

Particle in physics

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  • 4 chapters

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Through Standard deviation

Overview

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 (K) and pions (π).

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