First measurement of massive virtual photon emission from N* baryon resonances
nucl-ex
/ Authors
R. Abou Yassine, J. Adamczewski-Musch, O. Arnold, E. T. Atomssa, M. Becker, C. Behnke, J. C. Berger-Chen, A. Blanco, C. Blume, M. Böhmer
and 120 more authors
L. Chlad, P. Chudoba, I. Ciepał, S. Deb, C. Deveaux, D. Dittert, J. Dreyer, E. Epple, L. Fabbietti, P. Fonte, C. Franco, J. Friese, I. Fröhlich, J. Fortsch, T. Galatyuk, J. A. Garzón, R. Gernhäuser, R. Greifenhagen, M. Grunwald, M. Gumberidze, S. Harabasz, T. Heinz, T. Hennino, C. Höhne
/ Abstract
First information on the time-like electromagnetic structure of baryons in the second resonance region has been obtained from measurements of dielectron (e+ e-) invariant-mass and angular distributions in the quasi-free reaction $π-$ p $\rightarrow$ n e+ e- at $\sqrt{s_{πp}}$ = 1.49 GeV with the High Acceptance Di-Electron Spectrometer (HADES) at GSI using the pion beam impinging on a CH$_2$ target. We find a total cross section $σ$ = 2.97 $\pm$ 0.07data $\pm$ 0.21acc $\pm$ 0.31Zeff $μ$b. In complement to the analysis of the inclusive e+ e- channel, this data set provides a crucial test of the description of baryon time-like transitions. Approaches based on a Vector Meson Dominance amplitude containing direct photon and vector meson ($ρ$) couplings to the baryon provide a satisfactory agreement with the data. A good description is also obtained by electromagnetic time-like baryon transition form factors in a covariant spectator-quark model, pointing to the dominance of meson-cloud effects. The dielectron angular distributions exhibit the contributions of virtual photons ($γ^*$) with longitudinal polarization, in contrast to real photons. The virtual photon angular dependence supports the dominance of J=3/2, I=1/2 contributions observed in both the $γ^*$n and the $ππ$n channels.