D meson
The D mesons are the lightest particle containing charm quarks. They are often studied to gain knowledge on the weak interaction. The strange D mesons were called the "F mesons" prior to 1986.Overview
The D mesons were discovered in 1976 by the Mark I detector at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
Since the D mesons are the lightest mesons containing a single charm quark, they must change the charm quark into an quark of another type to decay. Such transitions involve a change of the internal charm quantum number, and can take place only via the weak interaction. In D mesons, the charm quark preferentially changes into a strange quark via an exchange of a W particle, therefore the D meson preferentially decays into s and s. PDG reports the resonance width. Here the conversion τ = is given instead.
