No Arabic abstract
Beam-helicity asymmetries have been measured at the MAMI accelerator in Mainz for the photoproduction of mixed-charge pion pairs in the reactions $boldsymbol{gamma}prightarrow npi^0pi^+$ off free protons and $boldsymbol{gamma}drightarrow (p)ppi^0pi^-$ and $boldsymbol{gamma}drightarrow (n)npi^0pi^+$ off quasi-free nucleons bound in the deuteron for incident photon energies up to 1.4 GeV. Circularly polarized photons were produced from bremsstrahlung of longitudinally polarized electrons and tagged with the Glasgow-Mainz magnetic spectrometer. The charged pions, recoil protons, recoil neutrons, and decay photons from $pi^0$ mesons were detected in the 4$pi$ electromagnetic calorimeter composed of the Crystal Ball and TAPS detectors. Using a complete kinematic reconstruction of the final state, excellent agreement was found between the results for free and quasi-free protons, suggesting that the quasi-free neutron results are also a close approximation of the free-neutron asymmetries. A comparison of the results to the predictions of the Two-Pion-MAID reaction model shows that the reaction mechanisms are still not well understood, in particular at low incident photon energies in the second nucleon-resonance region.
Beam-helicity asymmetries have been measured at the MAMI accelerator in Mainz for the photoproduction of neutral pion pairs in the reactions $vec{gamma}prightarrow ppi^0pi^0$ and $vec{gamma}drightarrow (n)ppi^0pi^0$, $vec{gamma}drightarrow (p)npi^0pi^0$ off free protons and off quasi-free nucleons bound in the deuteron for incident photon energies up to 1.4 GeV. Circularly polarized photons were produced from bremsstrahlung of longitudinally polarized electrons and tagged with the Glasgow magnetic spectrometer. Decay photons from the $pi^0$ mesons, recoil protons, and recoil neutrons were detected in the 4$pi$ covering electromagnetic calorimeter composed of the Crystal Ball and TAPS detectors. After kinematic reconstruction of the final state, excellent agreement was found between the results for free and quasi-free protons. This demonstrates that the free-nucleon behavior of such observables can be extracted from measurements with quasi-free nucleons, which is the only possibility for the neutron. Contrary to expectations, the measured asymmetries are very similar for reactions off protons and neutrons. The results are compared to the predictions from the Two-Pion-MAID reaction model and (for the proton) also to the Bonn-Gatchina coupled channel analysis.
Total cross sections, angular distributions, and invariant-mass distributions have been measured for the photoproduction of $pi^0pi^0$ pairs off free protons and off nucleons bound in the deuteron. The experiments were performed at the MAMI accelerator facility in Mainz using the Glasgow photon tagging spectrometer and the Crystal Ball/TAPS detector. The accelerator delivered electron beams of 1508 and 1557~MeV, which produced bremsstrahlung in thin radiator foils. The tagged photon beam covered energies up to 1400~MeV. The data from the free proton target are in good agreement with previous measurements and were only used to test the analysis procedures. The results for differential cross sections (angular distributions and invariant-mass distributions) for free and quasi-free protons are almost identical in shape, but differ in absolute magnitude up to 15%. Thus, moderate final-state interaction effects are present. The data for quasi-free neutrons are similar to the proton data in the second resonance region (final state invariant masses up to $approx$1550~MeV), where both reactions are dominated by the $N(1520)3/2^-rightarrow Delta(1232)3/2^+pi$ decay. At higher energies, angular and invariant-mass distributions are different. A simple analysis of the shapes of the invariant-mass distributions in the third resonance region is consistent with strong contributions of an $N^{star}rightarrow Nsigma$ decay for the proton, while the reaction is dominated by a sequential decay via a $Deltapi$ intermediate state for the neutron. The data are compared to predictions from the Two-Pion-MAID model and the Bonn-Gatchina coupled channel analysis.
The $Sigma$ beam asymmetry in the photoproduction of negative pions from quasi-free neutrons in a deuterium target was measured at Graal in the energy interval 700 - 1500 MeV and a wide angular range, using polarized and tagged photons. The results are compared with recent partial wave analyses.
Differential and total cross sections for the quasifree reactions $gamma prightarroweta p$ and $gamma nrightarroweta n$ have been determined at the MAMI-C electron accelerator using a liquid deuterium target. Photons were produced via bremsstrahlung from the 1.5 GeV incident electron beam and energy-tagged with the Glasgow photon tagger. Decay photons of the neutral decay modes $etarightarrow 2gamma$ and $etarightarrow 3pi^0 rightarrow 6gamma$ and coincident recoil nucleons were detected in a combined setup of the Crystal Ball and the TAPS calorimeters. The $eta$-production cross sections were measured in coincidence with recoil protons, recoil neutrons, and in an inclusive mode without a condition on recoil nucleons, which allowed a check of the internal consistency of the data. The effects from nuclear Fermi motion were removed by a kinematic reconstruction of the final-state invariant mass and possible nuclear effects on the quasifree cross section were investigated by a comparison of free and quasifree proton data. The results, which represent a significant improvement in statistical quality compared to previous measurements, agree with the known neutron-to-proton cross-section ratio in the peak of the $S_{11}(1535)$ resonance and confirm a peak in the neutron cross section, which is absent for the proton, at a center-of-mass energy $W = (1670pm 5)$ MeV with an intrinsic width of $Gammaapprox 30$ MeV.
The beam-helicity asymmetry was measured, for the first time, in photoproduction of $pi^{0}eta$ pairs on carbon, aluminum, and lead, with the A2 experimental setup at MAMI. The results are compared to an earlier measurement on a free proton and to the corresponding theoretical calculations. The Mainz model is used to predict the beam-helicity asymmetry for the nuclear targets. The present results indicate that the photoproduction mechanism for $pi^{0}eta$ pairs on nuclei is similar to photoproduction on a free nucleon. This process is dominated by the $D_{33}$ partial wave with the $etaDelta(1232)$ intermediate state.