On exotic hybrid meson production in gamma* gamma collisions

Abstract

We present a theoretical study of exotic hybrid meson (JPC=1-+) production in photon-photon collisions where one of the photons is deeply virtual, including twist 2 and twist 3 contributions. We calculate the cross section of this process which turns out to be large enough to imply sizeable counting rates in the present high luminosity electron-positron colliders. We emphasize theimportance of the pi eta decay channel for the detection of the hybrid meson candidate pi_1(1400) and calculate the cross section and the angular distribution for pi eta pair production in the unpolarized case. This angular distribution is a useful tool for disentangling the hybrid meson signal from the background. Finally, we calculate the single spin asymmetry associated with one initial longitudinally polarized lepton.Comment: 13 pages, 14 figure