Contributions to the width difference in the neutral D system from hadronic decays

Abstract

Recent studies of several multi-body D0 meson decays have revealed that the final states are dominantly CP-even. However, the small value of the width difference between the two physical eigenstates of the D0–D‾0 system indicates that the total widths of decays to CP-even and CP-odd final states should be the same to within about a percent. The known contributions to the width difference from hadronic D0 decays are discussed, and it is shown that an apparent excess of quasi-CP-even modes is balanced, within current uncertainty, by interference effects in quasi-flavour-specific decays. Decay modes which may significantly affect the picture with improved measurements are considered.