Experimental study of pp eta dynamics in the pp --> ppeta reaction
P. Moskal, H.-H. Adam, A. Budzanowski, R. Czyzykiewicz, D. Grzonka, M. Janusz, L. Jarczyk, B. Kamys, A. Khoukaz, K. Kilian, P. Kowina, K. Nakayama, W. Oelert, C. Piskor-Ignatowicz, J. Przerwa, T. Rozek, R. Santo, G. Schepers, T. Sefzick, M. Siemaszko, J. Smyrski, S. Steltenkamp, A. Taschner, P. Winter, M. Wolke, P. Wustner, W. Zipper
Abstract
A high statistics measurement of the pp --> ppeta reaction at an excess energy of Q = 15.5 MeV has been performed at the internal beam facility COSY-11. The stochastically cooled proton beam and the used detection system allowed to determine the momenta of the outgoing protons with a precision of 4 MeV/c (sigma) in the center-of-mass frame. The determination of the four-momentum vectors of both outgoing protons allowed to derive the complete kinematical information of the ppeta-system.
An unexpectedly large enhancement of the occupation density in the kinematical regions of low proton-eta relative momenta is observed. A description taking the proton-proton and the eta-proton interaction into account and assuming an on-shell incoherent pairwise interaction among the produced particles fails to explain this strong effect. Its understanding will require a rigorous three-body approach to the ppeta system and the precise determination of contributions from higher partial waves.
We also present an invariant mass spectrum of the proton-proton system determined at Q = 4.5 MeV. Interestingly, the enhancement at large relative momenta between protons is visible also at such a small excess energy.
In contrast to all other determined angular distributions, the orientation of the emission plane with respect to the beam direction is extracted to be anisotropic.