The Near-Threshold Production of Phi Mesons in pp Collisions

Abstract

The pp->pp phi reaction has been studied at the Cooler Synchrotron COSY-Juelich, using the internal beam and ANKE facility. Total cross sections have been determined at three excess energies epsilon near the production threshold. The differential cross section closest to threshold at epsilon=18.5 MeV exhibits a clear S-wave dominance as well as a noticeable effect due to the proton-proton final state interaction. Taken together with data for pp omega-production, a significant enhancement of the phi/omega ratio of a factor 8 is found compared to predictions based on the Okubo-Zweig-Iizuka rule.Comment: 4 Pages, 3 Figures, 1 Table, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let