φ and ω Meson Production in pp Reactions at p_{lab}=3.67 GeV/c
DISTO Collaboration, F.Balestra, Y.Bedfer, R.Bertini, L.C.Bland, A.Brenschede, F.Brochard, M.P.Bussa, Seonho Choi, M.Debowski, R.Dressler, M.Dzemidzic, J.-Cl.Faivre, I.V.Falomkin, L.Fava, L.Ferrero, J.Foryciarz, I.Froehlich, V.Frolov, R.Garfagnini, A.Grasso, E.Grosse, S.Heinz, V.V.Ivanov, W.W.Jacobs, W.Kuehn, A.Maggiora, M.Maggiora, A.Manara, D.Panzieri, H.-W.Pfaff, G.Piragino, G.B.Pontecorvo, A.Popov, J.Ritman, P.Salabura, V.Tchalyshev, F.Tosello, S.E.Vigdor, G.Zosi
Abstract
The exclusive production cross sections for \omega and \phi mesons have been measured in proton-proton reactions at p_{lab}=3.67 GeV/c. The observed \phi/\omega cross section ratio is (3.8\pm0.2^{+1.2}_{-0.9})\times 10^{-3}. After phase space corrections, this ratio is enhanced by about an order of magnitude relative to naive predictions based upon the Okubo-Zweig-Iizuka (OZI) rule, in comparison to an enhancement by a factor \sim 3 previously observed at higher beam momenta. The modest increase of this enhancement near the production threshold is compared to the much larger increase of the \phi/\omega ratio observed in specific channels of \bar pp annihilation experiments. Furthermore, differential cross section results are also presented which indicate that although the \phi meson is predominantly produced from a ^3P_1 proton-proton entrance channel, other partial waves contribute significantly to the production mechanism at this beam momentum.