The cross section for the pd --> ^3He eta pi0 reaction has been measured at a beam energy of 1450 MeV using the WASA detector at the CELSIUS storage ring and detecting one ^3He and four photons from the decays of the two photons. The data indicate that the production mechanism involves the formation of the Delta(1232) isobar. Although the beam energy does not allow the full peak of this resonance to be seen, the invariant masses of all three pairs of final state particles are well reproduced by a phase space Monte Carlo simulation weighted with the p-wave factor of the square of the pi^0 momentum in the ^3Hepi^0 system.
The production of $omega$ mesons in the $pd to{}^3$He$ omega$ reaction has been studied at two energies near the kinematic threshold, $T_p=1450$ MeV and $T_p=1360$ MeV. The differential cross section was measured as a function of the $omega$ cm angle at both energies over the whole angular range. Whereas the results at 1360 MeV are consistent with isotropy, strong rises are observed near both the forward and backward directions at 1450 MeV. Calculations made using a two-step model with an intermediate pion fail to reproduce the shapes of the measured angular distributions and also underestimate the total cross sections.
The tensor polarisation of omega mesons produced in the pd-->3He+omega reaction has been studied at two energies near threshold. The 3He nuclei were detected in coincidence with the pi0pi+pi- or pi0gamma decay products of the omega. In contrast to the case of phi meson production, the omega mesons are found to be unpolarised. This brings into question the applicability of the Okubo-Zweig-Iizuka rule when comparing the production of vector mesons in low energy hadronic reactions.
The cross sections of the pd -> 3He eta, pd -> 3He pi0 pi0 pi0 and pd -> 3He pi+ pi- pi0 reactions have been measured at beam kinetic energies T_p= 1360 MeV and T_p= 1450 MeV using the CELSIUS/WASA detector setup. At both energies, the differential cross section dsigma/dOmega of the eta meson in the pd -> 3He eta reaction shows a strong forward-backward asymmetry in the CMS. The ratio between the pd -> 3He pi+ pi- pi0 and the pd -> 3He pi0 pi0 pi0 cross sections has been analysed in terms of isospin amplitudes. The reconstructed invariant mass distributions of the pi-pi, 3He-pi and 3He-2pi systems provide hints on the role of nucleon resonances in the 3pi production process.
A formalism for spin observables of the reaction $pdto ~^3Heeta$ is derived in a model independent way. The general case with a full set of six independent spin amplitudes is studied. Furthermore, approximations by five and four spin amplitudes are investigated in the near threshold region. This region is of great interest to search for a quasi-bound $^3He-eta$ state, in particular, by measurement of energy dependence of relative phases of s- and p-wave amplitudes. Complete polarization experiments, allowing determination of spin amplitudes, are analyzed. It is shown that measurement of only analyzing powers and spin correlation coefficients hardly allows one to separate the s- and p-wave amplitudes, but additional measurement of polarization transfer coefficients simplifies this problem. Specific observables, given by products of one s- and one p-wave amplitudes, are found. Measurement of these observables will provide new independent information on the $^3He-eta$ pole position.
We report on the experimental search for the bound state of an $eta$ meson and $^{3}hspace{-0.03cm}mbox{He}$ nucleus performed using the WASA-at-COSY detector setup. In order to search for the $eta$-mesic nucleus decay, the $pdrightarrow$ $^{3}hspace{-0.03cm}mbox{He} 2gamma$ and $pdrightarrow$ $^{3}hspace{-0.03cm}mbox{He} 6gamma$ channels have been analysed. These reactions manifest the direct decay of $eta$ meson bound in $^{3}hspace{-0.03cm}mbox{He}$ nucleus. This non-mesonic decay channel has been considered for the first time. When taking into account only statistical errors, the obtained excitation functions reveal a slight indication for a possible bound state signal corresponding to an $^3$He-$eta$ nucleus width $Gamma$ above 20 MeV and binding energy $B_s$ between 0 and 15 MeV. However, the determined cross sections are consistent with zero in the range of the systematic uncertainty. Therefore, as final result we estimate only the upper limit for the cross section of the $eta$-mesic $^{3}hspace{-0.03cm}mbox{He}$ nucleus formation followed by the $eta$ meson decay which varies between $2$ nb and $15$ nb depending on possible bound state parameters.