Charm decays

Abstract

I discuss hadronic decays of $D$ mesons with emphasis on the recent discovery of charm CP violation in $D^0\to K^+K^-,\pi^+\pi^-$ decays. The measured difference $\Delta a_{CP} \, \equiv \; a_{CP}^{\mathrm{dir}}(D^0\rightarrow K^+K^-) - a_{CP}^{\mathrm{dir}}(D^0\rightarrow\pi^+\pi^-) = \; (-15.4\pm 2.9)\cdot 10^{-4}$ of two direct CP asymmetries exceeds the SM prediction by a factor of 7. A possible explanation is an enhancement of the penguin amplitude entering $ a_{CP}^{\mathrm{dir}}$ by QCD effects which are not understood yet. Alternatively, $\Delta a_{CP}$ could be dominated by contributions from new physics. In order to distinguish these two hypotheses further CP asymmetries should be measured. To this end CP asymmetries resulting from the interference of two tree-level amplitudes auch as $a_{CP}^{\mathrm{dir}}(D^0\rightarrow K_SK_S)$ or $a_{CP}^{\mathrm{dir}}(D^0 \to K^{*0} K_S)$ are especially interesting.