Nonleptonic charmed meson decays: Quark diagrams and final-state interactions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how final-state interactions, including inelastic rescattering and resonance formation, influence nonleptonic decays of charmed mesons, challenging previous assumptions in the quark-diagram approach.

Contribution

It demonstrates that inelastic effects induce nonzero phases between quark diagrams, altering the interpretation of decay amplitudes in charmed meson decays.

Findings

Inelastic rescattering causes nonzero phase differences between decay amplitudes.

Resonance formation significantly modifies weak decay input amplitudes.

SU(3) symmetry-breaking effects are analyzed in specific D0 decay channels.

Abstract

Effects of final-state interactions in nonleptonic decays of charmed mesons are studied in the framework of quark-diagram approach. For the case of u-d-s flavour symmetry we discuss how the inelastic coupled-channel rescattering effects (and, in particular, resonance formation in the final state) modify the input quark-diagram weak amplitudes. It is shown that such inelastic effects lead to the appearance of nonzero relative phases between various quark diagrams, thus invalidating some of the conclusions drawn in the past within the diagrammatical approach. The case of SU(3) symmetry-breaking in Cabibbo once-forbidden $D^0$ decays is also studied in some detail.