Analysis of ε^'/ε in the 1/N_c Expansion

We present a new analysis of the ratio ε^'/ε which measures the direct CP violation in K→ππ decays. We use the 1/N_c expansion within the framework of the effective chiral lagrangian for pseudoscalar mesons. The 1/N_c corrections to the hadronic matrix elements of all operators are calculated at leading order in the chiral expansion. Performing a simple scanning of the input parameters we obtain 1.5 * 10^(-4) ≤ ε^'/ε ≤ 31.6 * 10^(-4). We also investigate, in the chiral limit, the 1/N_c corrections to the operator Q_6 at next-to-leading order in the chiral expansion. We find large positive corrections which further enhance epsilon'/epsilon and can bring the standard model prediction close to the measured value for central values of the parameters. Our result indicates that at the level of the 1/N_c corrections a DeltaI = 1/2 enhancement is operative for Q_6 similar to the one of Q_1 and Q_2 which dominate the CP conserving amplitude.