Measurement of $CP$ asymmetry in $D^0 rightarrow K^- K^+$ and $D^0 rightarrow pi^- pi^+$ decays

Time-integrated $CP$ asymmetries in $D^0$ decays to the final states $K^- K^+$ and $pi^- pi^+$ are measured using proton-proton collisions corresponding to $3mathrm{,fb}^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity collected at centre-of-mass energies of $7mathrm{,Tekern -0.1em V}$ and $8mathrm{,Tekern -0.1em V}$. The $D^0$ mesons are produced in semileptonic $b$-hadron decays, where the charge of the accompanying muon is used to determine the initial flavour of the charm meson. The difference in $CP$ asymmetries between the two final states is measured to be begin{align} Delta A_{CP} = A_{CP}(K^-K^+)-A_{CP}(pi^-pi^+) = (+0.14 pm 0.16mathrm{,(stat)} pm 0.08mathrm{,(syst)})% . onumber end{align} A measurement of $A_{CP}(K^-K^+)$ is obtained assuming negligible $CP$ violation in charm mixing and in Cabibbo-favoured $D$ decays. It is found to be begin{align} A_{CP}(K^-K^+) = (-0.06 pm 0.15mathrm{,(stat)} pm 0.10mathrm{,(syst)}) % , onumber end{align} where the correlation coefficient between $Delta A_{CP}$ and $A_{CP}(K^-K^+)$ is $rho=0.28$. By combining these results, the $CP$ asymmetry in the $D^0rightarrowpi^-pi^+$ channel is $A_{CP}(pi^-pi^+)=(-0.20pm0.19mathrm{,(stat)}pm0.10mathrm{,(syst)})%$.