Charm Decays Within the Standard Model and Beyond

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent experimental and theoretical advances in charm quark decays within and beyond the Standard Model, highlighting new data, lattice QCD calculations, and potential new physics signatures.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of recent experimental results, theoretical calculations, and searches for new physics in charm decays, integrating these insights within the Standard Model framework.

Findings

Good agreement between recent predictions and experimental data.

Charm decays offer potential signatures of new physics.

Charm data improve measurements in beauty decays.

Abstract

The charm quark has unique properties that make it a very important probe of many facets of the Standard Model. New experimental information on charm decays is becoming available from dedicated experiments at charm factories, and through charm physics programs at the b-factories and hadron machines. In parallel, theorists are working on matrix element calculations based on unquenched lattice QCD, that can be validated by experimental measurements and affect our ultimate knowledge of the quark mixing parameters. Recent predictions are compared with corresponding experimental data and good agreement is found. Charm decays can also provide unique new physics signatures; the status of present searches is reviewed. Finally, charm data relevant for improving beauty decay measurements are presented.