2025/06/18 by D. A. Friday, Friday, David, Evelina Gersabeck +5
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quantum and Classical Electrodynamics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2506.15584
openalex publication_date 2025/06/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/19 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
50 years after the discovery of the first charmed particle, charm physics continues to be an extremely lively field of research and a cornerstone in particle physics. The study of charm, with its unique properties, is characterised by many challenging but also exciting peculiarities, making it an ideal testing ground for Standard Model (SM) predictions and a very sensitive probe of new physics. This chapter is intended to provide a pedagogical introduction to the physics of the charm quark and to its current theoretical and experimental status. Specifically, it discusses the main features of the charm sector of the SM, the theoretical and experimental challenges that arise when dealing with the charm quark, and the methods used to study it. An overview, both from a theoretical and experimental perspective, of fundamental observables such as lifetimes of charm hadrons, D0-meson mixing, charm charge-parity violation (CPV) and rare charm decays is also presented.