Measurement of Charm Meson Lifetimes

Abstract

We report measurements of the $D^0,D^{+}$, and $D_s^{+}$ meson lifetimes using $3.7f{b}^{-1}$ of e^+e^- annihilation data collected near the $\hat{I}\yen (4S)$ resonance with the CLEO detector. The lifetimes of the $D^0,D^{+}$, and $D_s^{+}$ mesons are measured to be $408.5\pm 4.1_{-3.4}^{+3.5}fs,1033.6\pm 22.1_{-12.7}^{+9.9}fs$, and $486.3\pm 15.0_{-5.1}^{+4.9}fs$, respectively. The precisions of the charm meson lifetimes reported here are comparable to those of the best previous measurements, and the systematic errors are very different. In a single experiment we find that the ratio of the $D_s^{+}$ and $D^0$ lifetimes differs from one by more than 4.5 standard deviations.

10 pages, postscript file also available through http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLNS