A Time-independent Way to Probe D^0-\bar D^0 Mixing at Tau-charm Factories

Abstract

$D^0-\bar{D}^0$ mixing leads to the mass and width differences in the mass eigenstates of $D^0$ and $\bar{D}^0$ mesons (measured by parameters $x^{~}_D$ and $y^{~}_D$ respectively), but their magnitudes cannot be reliably predicted by the standard model. We show that it is possible to separately determine $x^{~}_D$ and $y^{~}_D$ through {\it time-integrated} measurements of the dilepton events of coherent $D^0\bar{D}^0$ decays on the $\psi(4.14)$ resonance at a $\tau$-charm factory.