Photoproduction of the $f_2(1270)$ meson using the CLAS detector
nucl-ex
/ Authors
M. ~Carver, A. ~Celentano, K. ~Hicks, L. ~Marsicano, V. ~Mathieu, A. ~Pilloni, K. P. ~Adhikari, S. Adhikari, M. J. ~Amaryan, Giovanni Angelini
and 130 more authors
H. ~Atac, N. A. ~Baltzell, L. Barion, M. ~Battaglieri, I. ~Bedlinskiy, Fatiha Benmokhtar, A. ~Bianconi, A. S. ~Biselli, M. ~Bondi, F. ~Bossù, S. ~Boiarinov, W. J. ~Briscoe, W. K. ~Brooks, D. ~Bulumulla, V. D. ~Burkert, D. S. ~Carman, J. C. ~Carvajal, P. ~Chatagnon, T. ~Chetry, G. ~Ciullo, L. ~Clark, B. A. ~Clary, P. L. ~Cole
/ Abstract
The quark structure of the $f_2(1270)$ meson has, for many years, been assumed to be a pure quark-antiquark ($q\bar{q}$) resonance with quantum numbers $J^{PC} = 2^{++}$. Recently, it was proposed that the $f_2(1270)$ is a molecular state made from the attractive interaction of two $ρ$-mesons. Such a state would be expected to decay strongly to final states with charged pions, due to the dominant decay $ρ\to π^+ π^-$, whereas decay to two neutral pions would likely be suppressed. Here, we measure for the first time the reaction $γp \to π^0 π^0 p$, using the CLAS detector at Jefferson Lab for incident beam energies between 3.6-5.4~GeV. Differential cross sections, $dσ/ dt$, for $f_2(1270)$ photoproduction are extracted with good precision, due to low backgrounds, and are compared with theoretical calculations.