η AND η MESONS PRODUCTION AT COSY-11

The low emittance and small momentum spread of the proton and deuteron beams of the Cooler Synchrotron COSY combined with the high mass resolution of the COSY-11 detection system permit to study the creation of mesons in the nucleon-nucleon interaction down to the fraction of MeV with respect to the kinematical threshold. At such small excess energies, the ejectiles possess low relative momenta and are predominantly produced with the relative angular momentum equal to zero. Taking advantage of these conditions we have performed investigations aiming to determine the mechanism of the production of η and η′ mesons in the collision of hadrons as well as the hadronic interaction of these mesons with nucleons and nuclei. In this proceedings we address the ongoing studies of the spin and isospin dependence for the production of the η and η′ mesons in free and quasi-free nucleon-nucleon collisions. New results on the spin observables for the reaction, combined with the previously determined total cross section isospin dependence, reveal a statistically significant indication that the excitation of the nucleon to the S11(1535) resonance, the process which intermediates the production of the η meson in the nucleon-nuleon interactions, is predominantly due to the exchange of the π meson between the colliding nucleons.