https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/20147303012
Study of light mesons with WASA-at-COSY
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, 52425 Jülich, Germany
a e-mail: e.prencipe@fz-juelich.de
Published online: 9 June 2014
The WASA detector, operating at the COSY facility in Jülich (Germany) has been collecting data since 2007. The experiment allows to perform studies of light mesons, such as π0, η and ω rare decay processes, in order to perform precise measurements of branching ratios, determine Dalitz plot parameters, test symmetry and symmetry breaking, and evaluate transition form factors. In the experiments a proton or deuteron beam impinged on a pellet target of hydrogen or deuterium, which allows the reactions proton-proton (pp) or proton-deuteron (pd). A high-statistics sample of η mesons has been collected: in the reaction pd →3He η, 3×107η mesons were tagged at a beam energy of 1.0 GeV, while 5×108η mesons were produced in the reaction pp → ppη at 1.4 GeV. This corresponds to the production of 10 η/s and 100 η/s, respectively, for the two reaction processes. In the pp dataset a higher background level is found compared to the pd data set. In both cases, we identify the η mesons by means of the missing mass derived from the recoil particles. A kinematic fit largely rejects the background in our analysis. The advantage in using the pp dataset is that the production of η mesons is almost a factor of 10 higher than in the pd fusion to 3He. As we plan to measure the branching ratios of very rare processes, high statistics is needed. A summary of the recent activity on the study of light mesons with WASA-at-COSY here is given.
© Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2014
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
