Test of phi renormalization in nuclei through phi photoproduction
Abstract
We propose an experimental procedure to find out the medium modifications of the \phi meson. The reaction is inclusive \phi photoproduction in nuclei, looking for K^+ K^- pairs from the \phi decay with total momentum smaller than 100-150 MeV/c, which are made possible at energies of present laboratories from center of mass \phi backward production and the help of Fermi motion. We have conducted a many body calculation of the mass distribution of the \phi adapted to the experimental set up of a recent JLAB experiment where the backwards \phi photoproduction has been measured. Using recent results for the in medium properties of the \phi, we find that the width of the invariant mass distribution for photoproduction on medium to heavy nuclei is larger than the free \phi width by a factor of two or more.