Measurement of the mixing parameters of neutral charm mesons and search for indirect CP violation with D0 -> KS pi+ pi- decays at LHCb

  • Stefanie Reichert

Student thesis: Phd

Abstract

The hadronic decay D0 -> KS pi+ pi- provides direct access to the measurement of the mixing parameters of the neutral charm meson system and allows to test for indirect CP violation. Mixing is a time-dependent phenomenon for which the time evolution of the transition amplitude of a D0 (anti-D0) decay to the final state KS pi+ pi- has to be considered. The parameters driving those time-dependent oscillations are x and y, depending on the masses and widths of the physical eigenstates. The CP violation parameters |q/p| and phi describe the superposition of the flavour eigenstates D0 and anti-D0 and of the physical eigenstates D1 and D2. By measuring the time- and phase-space dependent distribution of D0 -> KS pi+ pi- decays, the mixing parameters can be extracted and a search for indirect CP violation can be performed. This thesis reports a measurement of the mixing parameters and the preparations of a measurement of the CP violation parameters on data collected with the LHCb experiment in 2011 and 2012, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3/fb. The D0 and anti-D0 mesons are required to originate from a semileptonic decay of a B meson. The parameters of interest are extracted from a fit in D0 decay time and the Dalitz variables. The phase-space distribution of D0 -> KS pi+ pi- decays is modelled by expressing the three-body decay as a succession of two-body decays. The decay amplitude of a D0 or anti-D0 meson into KS pi+ pi- final state is a superposition of all possible intermediate resonances and the single resonances interfere with each other across the phase-space.
Date of Award1 Aug 2016
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • The University of Manchester
SupervisorChristopher Parkes (Supervisor) & Marco Gersabeck (Supervisor)

Keywords

  • CP violation
  • Mixing
  • Flavour physics
  • LHCb
  • Charm physics

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