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 (Ds) 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 (or antiquark), they must change the charm (anti)quark into an (anti)quark of another type to decay. Such transitions violate 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 Ks and πs.
In November 2011, researchers at the LHCb experiment at CERN reported (3.5 sigma significance) that they have observed a direct CP violation in the neutral D meson decay, possibly beyond the Standard Model. This result builds on earlier measurements at the CDF, Belle, and BaBAR experiments.