Production and Decay of D_1(2420)^0 and D_2^*(2460)^0

Abstract

We have investigated $D^{+}{\pi }^{-}$ and $D^{\ast +}{\pi }^{-}$ final states and observed the two established $L=1$ charmed mesons, the $D_1(2420{)}^0$ with mass $2421_{-2-2}^{+1+2}$ MeV/c${}^2$ and width $20_{-5-3}^{+6+3}$ MeV/c${}^2$ and the $D_2^{\ast }(2460{)}^0$ with mass $2465\pm 3\pm 3$ MeV/c${}^2$ and width $28_{-7-6}^{+8+6}$ MeV/c${}^2$. Properties of these final states, including their decay angular distributions and spin-parity assignments, have been studied. We identify these two mesons as the $j_{light}=3/2$ doublet predicted by HQET. We also obtain constraints on {\footnotesize ${\Gamma }_S/({\Gamma }_S+{\Gamma }_D)$} as a function of the cosine of the relative phase of the two amplitudes in the $D_1(2420{)}^0$ decay.

Comments: 15 pages in REVTEX format. hardcopies with figures can be obtained by sending mail to: preprints@lns62.lns.cornell.edu