Long distance contributions to neutral $D$-meson mixing from lattice QCD

The study of neutral $D$-meson mixing provides a unique probe of long-distance effects in the charm sector, where Standard Model contributions are dominated by nonperturbative effects. In this work, we investigate the feasibility of using spectral reconstruction techniques within lattice QCD to compute the long-distance contributions to $D^0- \bar{D}^0$ mixing. After outlining the general formalism describing neutral meson mixing in the charm sector, we focus on the determination of the mixing amplitudes and the dimensionless parameters $x = \Delta m_D / \Gamma_D$ and $y = \Delta \Gamma_D /(2 \Gamma_D)$, which respectively encode the mass and width differences between the $D$-meson mass eigenstates. We discuss in detail the required theoretical and computational framework, including the definition and renormalization of the four-quark operators entering the $\Delta C = 1$ weak Hamiltonian, and strategies for evaluating the relevant correlation functions employing variance-reduction techniques. To extract the mixing amplitudes, we explore methods for reconstructing the spectral density from lattice correlators, providing preliminary assessments of the data quality required to reach the scaling regime, where the smearing width is small enough to yield physically meaningful results. Our findings lay the groundwork for future precision determinations of long-distance contributions to $D$-meson mixing from first principles.