Remark on Charm Quark Fragmentation to $D^{\ast \ast }$ Mesons

Abstract

The observed $D^{\ast \ast }$ mesons have $c\bar{q}$ flavor quantum numbers and spin-parity of the light degrees of freedom $s_{\ell }^{{\pi }_{\ell }}=3/2^{+}$. In the $m_c\to \infty$ limit the spin of the charm quark is conserved and the $c\to D^{\ast \ast }$ fragmentation process is characterized by the probability for the charm quark to fragment to a $D^{\ast \ast }$ meson with a given helicity for the light degrees of freedom. We consider the calculated $b\to B_c^{\ast \ast }$ fragmentation functions in the limit $m_c/m_b\to 0$ as a qualitative model for the $c\to D^{\ast \ast }$ fragmentation functions. We find that in this model charm quark fragmentation to $s_{\ell }^{{\pi }_{\ell }}=3/2^{+}$ light degrees of freedom with helicities $\pm 1/2$ is favored over fragmentation to $s_{\ell }^{{\pi }_{\ell }}=3/2^{+}$ light degrees of freedom with helicities $\pm 3/2$.

6 pages, CALT-68-1928

References in corpus (2)

• Properties of Orbitally Excited Heavy-Light Mesons
• Production, Decay, and Polarization of Excited Heavy Hadrons

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Excited Heavy Mesons Beyond Leading Order in the Heavy Quark Expansion
• Observation of Ds1(2536)+ -> D+pi-K+ and angular decomposition of Ds1(2536)+ -> D*+K0S
• Helicity Probabilities For Heavy Quark Fragmentation Into Excited Mesons
• Excited Charmed Baryon Decays and Their Implications for Fragmentation Parameters
• Revisiting spin alignment of heavy mesons in its inclusive production