Flavor symmetry and decays of charmed mesons to pairs of light pseudoscalars

TL;DR

This paper analyzes new decay data of charmed mesons into light pseudoscalars to test flavor symmetry, extract decay amplitudes, and observe interference effects between different decay modes.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of flavor symmetry and strong phases in charmed meson decays using recent experimental data.

Findings

Evidence for interference between Cabibbo-favored and doubly-Cabibbo-suppressed decays.

Extraction of relative strong phases in decay amplitudes.

Confirmation of expected decay pattern differences in $D^0$ and $D^+$ decays.

Abstract

New data on the decays of the charmed particles $D^0$, $D^+$, and $D_s$ to pairs of light pseudoscalar mesons $P$ allow the testing of flavor symmetry and the extraction of key amplitudes. Information on relative strong phases is obtained. One sees evidence for the expected interference between Cabibbo-favored and doubly-Cabibbo-suppressed decays in the differing patterns of $D^0 \to K_{S,L} \pi^0$ and $D^+ \to K_{S,L} \pi^+$ decays.