Toy Model for Pion Production II: The role of three-particle singularities

The influence of three-particle breakup singularities on s-wave meson production in nucleon-nucleon collisions is studied within the distorted wave Born approximation. This study is based on a simple scalar model for the two-nucleon interaction and the production mechanism. An algorithm for the exact numerical treatment of the inherent three-body cuts, together with its straightforward implementation is presented. It is also shown that two often-used approximations to avoid the calculation of the three-body breakup are not justified. The possible impact on pion production observables is discussed.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure

Towards a field theoretic understanding of NN->NNpi

We study the production amplitude for the reaction NN->NNpi up to next--to--leading order in chiral perturbation theory using a counting scheme that takes into account the large scale introduced by the initial momentum. In particular we investigate a subtlety that arises once the leading loop contributions are convoluted with the NN wavefunctions as demanded by the non--perturbative nature of the NN interaction. We show how to properly identify the irreducible contribution of loop diagrams in such type of reaction. The net effect of the inclusion of all next-to-leading order loops is to enhance the leading rescattering amplitude by a factor of 4/3, bringing its contribution to the cross section for pp->dpi+ close to the experimental value.Comment: 15 Pages, 5 Figure