Subthreshold and near-threshold kaon and antikaon production in proton-nucleus reactions

The differential production cross sections of K^+ and K^- mesons have been measured at the ITEP proton synchrotron in p+Be, p+Cu collisions under lab angle of 10.5^0, respectively, at 1.7 and 2.25, 2.4 GeV beam energies. A detailed comparison of these data with the results of calculations within an appropriate folding model for incoherent primary proton-nucleon, secondary pion-nucleon kaon and antikaon production processes and processes associated with the creation of antikaons via the decay of intermediate phi mesons is given. We show that the strangeness exchange process YN->NNK^- gives a small contribution to the antikaon yield in the kinematics of the performed experiment. We argue that in the case when antikaon production processes are dominated by the channels with KK^- in the final state, the cross sections of the corresponding reactions are weakly influenced by the in-medium kaon and antikaon mean fields.Comment: 24 pages. accepted for publication at J.Phys.

A study of backward going pp and π−\pi^{-} in νμCC\nu_{\mu}CC interactions with the NOMAD detector

Backward proton and $\pi^-$ production has been studied in $\nu_{\mu}CC$ interactions with carbon nuclei. Detailed analyses of the momentum distributions, of the production rates, and of the general features of events with a backward going particle, have been carried out in order to understand the mechanism producing these particles. The backward proton data have been compared with the predictions of the reinteraction and the short range correlation models.Comment: 29 pages, 14 figures, submitted to Nucl. Phys.

Dibaryon model for nuclear force and the properties of the 3N3N system

The dibaryon model for $NN$ interaction, which implies the formation of an intermediate six-quark bag dressed by a $\sigma$-field, is applied to the $3N$ system, where it results in a new three-body force of scalar nature between the six-quark bag and a third nucleon. A new multicomponent formalism is developed to describe three-body systems with nonstatic pairwise interactions and non-nucleonic degrees of freedom. Precise variational calculations of $3N$ bound states are carried out in the dressed-bag model including the new scalar three-body force. The unified coupling constants and form factors for $2N$ and $3N$ force operators are used in the present approach, in a sharp contrast to conventional meson-exchange models. It is shown that this three-body force gives at least half the $3N$ total binding energy, while the weight of non-nucleonic components in the $^3$H and $^3$He wavefunctions can exceed 10%. The new force model provides a very good description of $3N$ bound states with a reasonable magnitude of the $\sigma NN$ coupling constant. A new Coulomb $3N$ force between the third nucleon and dibaryon is found to be very important for a correct description of the Coulomb energy and r.m.s. charge radius in $^3$He. In view of the new results for Coulomb displacement energy obtained here for A=3 nuclei, an explanation for the long-term Nolen--Schiffer paradox in nuclear physics is suggested. The role of the charge-symmetry-breaking effects in the nuclear force is discussed.Comment: 64 pages, 7 figures, LaTeX, to be published in Phys. At. Nucl. (2005