D meson ($D$)

The ground-state D meson family contains open-charm mesons with a charm quark and a light antiquark: $D^0=c\bar{u}$ and $D^{+}=c\bar{d}$, together with their antiparticles. Their spin-parity is $0^{-}$. A Ds meson instead pairs charm with a strange antiquark.^[ref]

These ground states decay weakly, making their lifetimes and final-state distributions probes of charm-changing interactions. Excited D-family states need not share that decay pattern: when kinematically allowed, an excited state can decay strongly to a lower charmed state and other hadrons. The neutral ground state also participates in neutral D-meson mixing.

A charmed strange meson. Its ground-state charged particle has valence content $c\bar{s}$ and spin-parity $0^{-}$. Its antiparticle has the conjugate valence content. Nonleptonic decays are governed by weak charged currents and hadronic transition matrix elements.