Search for Low Mass Exotic mesonic structures. Part I: experimental results

Recently, several papers discussed on the existence of a low mass new structure at a mass close to M=214.3 MeV. It was suggested that the $\Sigma^{+}$ disintegration: $\Sigma^{+}\to$pP$^{0}$, P$^{0}\to\mu^{-}\mu^{+}$ proceeds through an intermediate particle P$^{0}$ having such mass. The present work intends to look at other new or available data, in order to observe the eventual existence of small narrow peaks or shoulders in very low mesonic masses. Indeed narrow structures were already extracted from various data in dibaryons, baryons and mesons (at larger masses that those studied here).Comment: 7 pages 11 figure

Isotopic Production Cross Sections in Proton-Nucleus Collisions at 200 MeV

Intermediate mass fragments (IMF) from the interaction of $^{27}$Al, $^{59}$Co and $^{197}$Au with 200 MeV protons were measured in an angular range from 20 degree to 120 degree in the laboratory system. The fragments, ranging from isotopes of helium up to isotopes of carbon, were isotopically resolved. Double differential cross sections, energy differential cross sections and total cross sections were extracted.Comment: accepted by Phys. Rev.

Non-equilibrium emission of complex fragments from p+Au collisions at 2.5 GeV proton beam energy

Energy and angular dependence of double differential cross sections d$^2\sigma$/d$\Omega$dE was measured for reactions induced by 2.5 GeV protons on Au target with isotopic identification of light products (H, He, Li, Be, and B) and with elemental identification of heavier intermediate mass fragments (C, N, O, F, Ne, Na, Mg, and Al). It was found that two different reaction mechanisms give comparable contributions to the cross sections. The intranuclear cascade of nucleon-nucleon collisions followed by evaporation from an equilibrated residuum describes low energy part of the energy distributions whereas another reaction mechanism is responsible for high energy part of the spectra of composite particles. Phenomenological model description of the differential cross sections by isotropic emission from two moving sources led to a very good description of all measured data. Values of the extracted parameters of the emitting sources are compatible with the hypothesis claiming that the high energy particles emerge from pre-equilibrium processes consisting in a breakup of the target into three groups of nucleons; small, fast and hot fireball of $\sim$ 8 nucleons, and two larger, excited prefragments, which emits the light charged particles and intermediate mass fragments. The smaller of them contains $\sim$ 20 nucleons and moves with velocity larger than the CM velocity of the proton projectile and the target. The heavier prefragment behaves similarly as the heavy residuum of the intranuclear cascade of nucleon-nucleon collisions. %The mass and charge dependence of the total production cross %sections was extracted from the above analysis for all observed %reaction products. This dependence follows the power low behavior %(A$^{-\tau}$ or Z$^{-\tau}$)

Incoherent Photoproduction of η\eta-mesons from the Deuteron near Threshold

Incoherent photoproduction of the $\eta$-meson on the deuteron is studied for photon energies from threshold to 800 MeV. The dominant contribution, the $\gamma$N-$\eta$N amplitude, is described within an isobar model. The final state interaction derived from the CD-Bonn potential is included and found to be important for the description of the production cross section close to threshold. Possible effects from the $\eta N$ final state interaction are discussed.Comment: 11 pages, revtex, including 6 figure

Meson Production in p+d Reactions

The production of neutral and charged pions as well as eta mesons is studied in the Delta and N* resonance region, respectively. Heavy A=3 recoils were measured with the GEM detector. The differential cross sections covering the full angular range are compared with model calculations.Comment: 4 pages, latex, 4 figures, talk presented at the XVIIth European Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics, Evora, Portugal, September 2000; to be published in Nucl. Phys.

Threshold meson production and cosmic ray transport

An interesting accident of nature is that the peak of the cosmic ray spectrum, for both protons and heavier nuclei, occurs near the pion production threshold. The Boltzmann transport equation contains a term which is the cosmic ray flux multiplied by the cross section. Therefore when considering pion and kaon production from proton-proton reactions, small cross sections at low energy can be as important as larger cross sections at higher energy. This is also true for subthreshold kaon production in nuclear collisions, but not for subthreshold pion production.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figur

Formula for proton-nucleus reaction cross section at intermediate energies and its application

We construct a formula for proton-nucleus total reaction cross section as a function of the mass and neutron excess of the target nucleus and the proton incident energy. We deduce the dependence of the cross section on the mass number and the proton incident energy from a simple argument involving the proton optical depth within the framework of a black sphere approximation of nuclei, while we describe the neutron excess dependence by introducing the density derivative of the symmetry energy, L, on the basis of a radius formula constructed from macroscopic nuclear models. We find that the cross section formula can reproduce the energy dependence of the cross section measured for stable nuclei without introducing any adjustable energy dependent parameter. We finally discuss whether or not the reaction cross section is affected by an extremely low density tail of the neutron distribution for halo nuclei.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, added reference

Comparison of nonequilibrium processes in p+Ni and p+Au collisions at GeV energies

The energy and angular dependence of double differential cross sections d2sigma/dOmega dE were measured for p, d, t, 3,4,6He, 6,7,8Li, 7,9,10Be, 10,11B, and C produced in collisions of 1.2, 1.9, and 2.5 GeV protons with a Ni target. The shape of the spectra and angular distributions does almost not change whereas the absolute value of the cross sections increases by a factor about 1.7 for all ejectiles in this beam energy range. It was found that energy and angular dependencies of the cross sections cannot be reproduced by the microscopic model of intranuclear cascade with coalescence of nucleons and the statistical model for evaporation of particles from excited, equilibrated residual nuclei. The inclusion of nonequilibrium processes, described by a phenomenological model of the emission from fast and hot moving sources, resulting from break-up of the target nucleus by impinging proton, leads to very good reproduction of data. Cross sections of these processes are quite large, exhausting approximately half of the total production cross sections. Due to good reproduction of energy and angular dependencies of d2sigma/dOmega dE by model calculation it was possible to determine total production cross sections for all studied ejectiles. Results obtained in this work point to the analogous reaction mechanism for proton induced reactions on Ni target as that observed previously for Au target in the same beam energy range.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures