RHO PRODUCTION IN PROTON-NUCLEUS COLLISION

Abstract

With the final aim to explore the effect of the medium on hadron masses we study the reaction mechanism for the (p,p′ρ0) reaction on nuclei. We focus on the amplitudes which are dominated by the N*(1720)P13 resonance in intermediate state. This resonance has about 80% decay probability to Nρ channel. A nonrelativistic formalism is written for different amplitudes. The theoretical cross sections are presented for the 12 C target nucleus around 3 GeV beam energy. These results are found to be sensitive to the N* as well as ρ mass modifications in the medium. These two effects in the p′ spectrum can be separated experimentally as they are found to occur at different values of the p′ momentum. Because of the exploratory nature of this investigation, simple forms are used for the bound-state wave functions, and the continuum particles are approximated by plane waves.