Review of experimental studies of charmed meson decays at BESIII

TL;DR

This review summarizes experimental measurements of charmed meson decays at BESIII, providing precise values for CKM matrix elements, decay constants, form factors, and tests of the Standard Model and potential new physics.

Contribution

It compiles and analyzes the most recent and precise experimental results on charmed meson decays from BESIII, including averages of key parameters and form factors.

Findings

Precise averages for CKM matrix elements |V_cs| and |V_cd|.

Accurate decay constants for D+ and D_s+ mesons.

Detailed hadronic form factors for various D meson transitions.

Abstract

Experimental measurements of different decays of charmed mesons have been extensively performed at BESIII. Precision measurements of absolute branching fractions of different decays, the decay constants of $D^+$ and $D^+_s$ mesons, hadronic form factors of $D$ transitions to light hadrons ($K$, $\pi$, $\eta$, $\eta^\prime$, $K^*(892)$, $\rho$, $\omega$, $\phi$, $K_1(1270)$, $f_0(980)$), $c\to s(d)$ Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix elements, tests of lepton flavor universality with various (semi)leptonic $D$ decays, precision measurements of strong phase difference between $D^0$ and $\bar D^0$ decays, amplitude analyses of multibody hadronic $D_{(s)}$ decays, search for rare $D$ decays have been reported. The reported results offer important information to test different theoretical calculations, to test the unitarity of the CKM matrix, and to search for new physics effects beyond the standard model (SM). This paper reviews experimental studies of different decays of $D^0$, $D^+$, and $D^+_s$ as well as their excitations at BESIII as of April 15, 2026. Based on existing results of (semi)leptonic $D$ decays from all experiments, we have presented the most precise averages for the CKM matrix elements $|V_{cs}|=0.9648\pm0.009\pm0.0036$ and $|V_{cd}|=0.2259\pm0.0014\pm0.0013$, the decay constants of $D^+$ and $D^+_s$ $f_{D^+}=(213.1\pm2.0\pm1.5)$ MeV and $f_{D^+_s}=(253.2\pm1.2\pm1.6)$ MeV, as well as the hadronic form factors $f^{D\to K}_+(0)=0.7342\pm0.0007\pm0.0008$, $f^{D\to \pi}_+(0)=0.6337\pm0.0053\pm0.0037$, $f^{D\to \eta}_+(0)=0.351\pm0.009\pm0.005$, $f^{D\to \eta^\prime}_+(0)=0.263\pm0.025\pm0.006$, $f^{D_s\to \eta}_+(0)=0.4653\pm0.0058\pm0.0069$, $f^{D_s\to \eta^\prime}_+(0)=0.535\pm0.020\pm0.011$, and $f^{D_s\to K^0}_+(0)=0.627\pm0.036\pm0.009$, where the first and second uncertainties are statistical and systematic, respectively.