The differential cross section of π+p elastic scattering has been measured in two high-statistics bubble-chamber exposures at laboratory beam momenta of 3.7 and 7.1 GeV/c. A new feature suggested by these data is a dip in dσdu at −u≃3 GeV2. This dip corresponds well to the third zero of J0(b−u′), where ℏcb=1 fm. The effective u-channel Regge trajectory computed for these two energies has a slope of 0.22 ± 0.26.
New results are presented on the reaction π+p→η0Δ++ between 1.2 and 2.67 GeVc. The data above 2 GeVc, when combined with some existing data, give evidence for a dip in the t distribution near t=−1.5 (GeVc).2 This dip, and other features of the data, are adequately described by an A2 Regge-pole model. The effective A2 trajectory is calculated and found to disagree with that obtained from the reaction π−p→η0n.
The KS0KS0π0 system has been studied in the exclusive reaction π−p→KS0KS0π0n at 21.4 GeV/c. Evidence for the production of the f1(1285) and the η(1460) is presented. The η(1460) is produced away from minimum momentum transfer in the presence of nonresonant K*K (S-wave) production and phase-space background. The observed mass, width, and decay properties of the η(1460) are consistent with those attributed to the ι(1460) observed in radiative Jψ decay.
Measurements of the polarization parameters and angular distributions are reported for π±p elastic scattering at 100 GeV/c and for pp elastic scattering at 100- and 300-GeV/c incident momentum. The π±p data cover the kinematic range 0.18≤−t≤1.10 GeV2 and are in agreement with current Regge-model predictions. The pp data cover the kinematic range 0.15≤−t≤1.10 GeV2 and 0.15≤−t≤2.00 GeV2 at 100 and 300 GeV/c, respectively, and are found to be consistent with absorption-model predictions.
A comparison is made of the low-mass three-meson systems (πππ), (Kππ), (π K K ) and ( K K K ) diffractively produced in the reaction meson + proton → three mesons + proton. Several striking similarities and a few important differences are observed: (i) the reactions are consistent with the assumption that the three mesons decay entirely into a 0 − meson and a 0 + , 1 − or 2 + resonance; (ii) the three-meson mass spectra have a peak ≈ 250 MeV above the effective threshold M eff of the dominant decay mode and then fall off approximately as (mass) −3 ;(iii) the average spin 〈 J 〉 = 0.55 + 1.1 Q eff , where Q eff = M - M eff ; (iv) the average orbital angular momentum 〈 l 〉 increases according to 〈 l 〉 = 0.75 Q eff ; (v) the three-meson states are produced dominantly in unnatural spin-parity states and no evidence for their being resonant is found; (vi) the only natural spin-parity states found are the well-established 2 + resonances A 2 and K ∗ (1420); they have similar properties to the non-resonant unnatural parity states except for a dip at t = 0 in the dσ/d t distributions; (vii) both the unnatural and natural spin-parity states are produced mostly by an exchange of natural parity; (viii) there is evidence for two types of production mechanism with different polarization properties, one approximately conserving helicity in the t -channel and the other in the s -channel.
Differential cross sections and polarizations have been measured for the reaction π − p → K 0 Λ and π − p → K 0 Σ 0 at 3.9 GeV/ c π − momentum. Comparison of these data with those of the related reactions K − n → π − Λ and K − p → π − Σ + (at approximately the same c.m. energy) indicate that simple Regge-pole models involving only K ∗ (890) and K ∗ (1420) exchange are unable to describe all the features of the data. On the other hand, comparison of the π − p → K 0 Σ 0 data with that of π + p → K + Σ + shows that the data are consistent with absence of exotic strange-meson exchange.
The differential cross section d σ d t′ for the charge-exchange process π + p → π 0 ( π + p) at 8, 16 and 23 GeV/ c is presented for several regions of the π + p effective mass. It is found that the dip at t ′ ≈ 0.6 (GeV/ c ) 2 which is observed in the Δ(1236) mass band becomes a less pronounced structure in the higher mass regions. However, while the slope of the d σ d t′ distributions in the near-forward direction decreases strongly with increasing π + p mass, there is no evidence that the observed structure moves to higher values of t ′ as the π + p mass increases. These results are consistent with a Regge-exchange picture where the position of the dip is determined by the exchanged trajectory, but are inconsistent with a simple geometrical picture.