Final-State Phases in Charmed Meson Two-Body Nonleptonic Decays

Abstract

Observed decay rates indicate large phase differences among the amplitudes for the charge states in $D \to \bar K \pi$ and $D \to \bar K^* \pi$ but relatively real amplitudes in the charge states for $D \to \bar K \rho$. This feature is traced using an SU(3) flavor analysis to a sign flip in the contribution of one of the amplitudes contributing to the latter processes in comparison with its contribution to the other two sets. This amplitude may be regarded as an effect of rescattering and is found to be of magnitude comparable to others contributing to charmed particle two-body nonleptonic decays.