Review of experimental studies of charmed meson decays at BESIII

Abstract

Experimental measurements of different decays of charmed mesons (D⁰, D⁺, and D_s^{\text{+}} as well as their excitations D^*0, D^*+, and D_s^{\text{*+}}) have been extensively performed at BESIII. Precision measurements of absolute branching fractions of different decays, the decay constants of D⁺ and D_s^{\text{+}} mesons, hadronic transition form factors of D transitions to light hadrons (K, π, η, η′, K^*(892), ρ, ω, ϕ, K₁(1270), f₀(500), f₀(980), a₀(980)), c→s(d) Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix elements, tests of lepton flavor universality with various (semi)leptonic D decays, precision measurements of strong phase difference between D⁰ and {\overline{D}}^0 decays, amplitude analyses of multibody hadronic D_(s) decays, search for rare D decays have been reported. The reported results offer important information to test different theoretical calculations, to test the unitarity of the CKM matrix, and to search for new physics effects beyond the standard model (SM). This paper reviews experimental studies of different decays of D⁰, D⁺, and D_s^{\text{+}} as well as their excitations at BESIII as of April 15, 2026. Based on existing results of (semi)leptonic Ddecays from all experiments, we have presented the most precise averages for the CKM matrix elements |Vcs|=0.9672±0.0009±0.0036 and |V_cd|=0.2259±0.0014±0.0013, the decay constants of D⁺ and D_s^{\text{+}} f_{D^{\text{+}}}=(213.1\pm 2.0\pm 1.5) MeV and f_{D_s^{\text{+}}}=(253.2\pm 1.2\pm 1.6) MeV, as well as the hadronic transition form factors f_{\text{+}}^{D\to K}(0)=0.7366\pm 0.0007\pm 0.0008, f_{\text{+}}^{D\to \text{π}}(0)=0.6337\pm 0.0053\pm 0.0037, f_{\text{+}}^{D\to \eta }(0)=0.351\pm 0.009\pm 0.005, f_{\text{+}}^{D\to {\eta }^{\prime }}(0)=0.263\pm 0.025\pm 0.006, f_{\text{+}}^{D_s\to \eta }(0)=0.4653\pm 0.0058\pm 0.0069, f_{\text{+}}^{D_s\to {\eta }^{\prime }}(0)=0.535\pm 0.020\pm 0.011, and f_{\text{+}}^{D_s\to K^0}(0)=0.627\pm 0.036\pm 0.009, where the first and second uncertainties are statistical and systematic, respectively.

Keywords

charm physics / BESIII / experimental particle physics

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

Higher Education Press 2026

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