Lifetimes of singly charmed hadrons

TL;DR

This paper provides detailed theoretical predictions for the lifetimes and decay properties of singly charmed hadrons using heavy quark expansion, aligning well with experimental data and clarifying the hierarchy of their lifetimes.

Contribution

It offers the first comprehensive analysis including all known corrections and explores the impact of charm mass and baryon wavefunctions on lifetime predictions.

Findings

Predicted lifetime hierarchy matches experimental observations.

Results agree with recent experimental data on semileptonic decay rates.

Provides refined lifetime and decay rate predictions for charmed mesons and baryons.

Abstract

We provide an extensive study of the lifetimes of singly charmed baryons and mesons, within the heavy quark expansion with all known corrections included. A special attention is devoted to the choice of the charm mass and wavefunctions of heavy baryons. We give our predictions for lifetimes, lifetime ratios, and semileptonic branching ratios of singly charmed baryons. Our results accommodate the experimentally-favoured hierarchy of singly charmed baryon lifetimes \begin{eqnarray*} \tau\left(\Xi_c^{0}\right) < \tau\left(\Lambda_c^{+}\right)< \tau\left(\Omega_c^{0}\right) < \tau\left(\Xi_c^{+}\right)\, \end{eqnarray*} in contrast to earlier theoretical findings. Predictions for charmed meson lifetimes and semileptonic decay rates are in agreement with a recent comprehensive study and experimental results within uncertainties.