The differential cross section, $dsigma/dt$ for $omega$ meson exclusive photoproduction on the proton above the resonance region ($2.6<W<2.9$ GeV) was measured up to a momentum transfer $-t = 5$ GeV$^2$ using the CLAS detector at Jefferson Laboratory. The $omega$ channel was identified by detecting a proton and $pi^+$ in the final state and using the missing mass technique. While the low momentum transfer region shows the typical diffractive pattern expected from Pomeron and Reggeon exchange, at large $-t$ the differential cross section has a flat behavior. This feature can be explained by introducing quark interchange processes in addition to the QCD-inspired two-gluon exchange.
The differential cross section, $dsigma/dt$, for $rho^0$ meson photoproduction on the proton above the resonance region ($2.6<W<2.9$ GeV) was measured up to a momentum transfer $-t = 5$ GeV$^2$ using the CLAS detector at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. The $rho^0$ channel was extracted from the measured two charged-pion cross section by fitting the $pi^+pi^-$ and $ppi^+$ invariant masses. The low momentum transfer region shows the typical diffractive pattern expected from Reggeon-exchange. The flatter behavior at large -t cannot be explained solely in terms of QCD-inspired two-gluon exchange models. The data indicate that other processes, like quark interchange, are important to fully describe $rho$ photoproduction.
An experimental study of $omega$ photoproduction on the proton was conducted by using the Crystal Ball and TAPS multiphoton spectrometers together with the photon tagging facility at the Mainz Microtron MAMI. The $gamma ptoomega p$ differential cross sections are measured from threshold to the incident-photon energy $E_gamma=1.40$ GeV ($W=1.87$ GeV for the center-of-mass energy) with 15-MeV binning in $E_gamma$ and full production-angle coverage. The quality of the present data near threshold gives access to a variety of interesting physics aspects. As an example, an estimation of the $omega N$ scattering length $alpha_{omega p}$ is provided.
The exclusive reaction $gamma p to p K^+ K^-$ was studied in the photon energy range $3.0 - 3.8 mbox{ GeV}$ and momentum transfer range $0.6<-t<1.3 mbox{ GeV}^2$. Data were collected with the CLAS detector at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. In this kinematic range the integrated luminosity was approximately 20 pb$^{-1}$. The reaction was isolated by detecting the $K^+$ and the proton in CLAS, and reconstructing the $K^-$ via the missing-mass technique. Moments of the di-kaon decay angular distributions were extracted from the experimental data. Besides the dominant contribution of the $phi$ meson in the $P$-wave, evidence for $S-P$ interference was found. The differential production cross sections $dsigma/dt$ for individual waves in the mass range of the $phi$ resonance were extracted and compared to predictions of a Regge-inspired model. This is the first time the $t$-dependent cross section of the $S$-wave contribution to the elastic $K^+K^-$ photoproduction has been measured.
Diffractive photoproduction of rho, phi and J/psi was studied in the BFKL approach to hard colour singlet exchange. Differential cross sections, the energy dependence and spin density matrix elements were calculated and compared to data from HERA. The overall description of data is reasonably good, except of the single flip amplitude which has the wrong sign. Importance of chiral odd components of the photon is stressed.
The differential cross sections and unpolarized spin-density matrix elements for the reaction $gamma pto pomega$ were measured using the CBELSA/TAPS experiment for initial photon energies ranging from the reaction threshold to 2.5 GeV. These observables were measured from the radiative decay of the $omega$ meson, $omegatopi^0gamma$. The cross sections cover the full angular range and show the full extent of the $t$-channel forward rise. The overall shape of the angular distributions in the differential cross sections and unpolarized spin-density matrix elements are in fair agreement with previous data. In addition, for the first time, a beam of linearly-polarized tagged photons in the energy range from 1150 MeV to 1650 MeV was used to extract polarized spin-density matrix elements. These data were included in the Bonn-Gatchina partial wave analysis (PWA). The dominant contribution to $omega$ photoproduction near threshold was found to be the $3/2^+$ partial wave, which is primarily due to the sub-threshold $N(1720),3/2^+$ resonance. At higher energies, pomeron-exchange was found to dominate whereas $pi$-exchange remained small. These $t$-channel contributions as well as further contributions from nucleon resonances were necessary to describe the entire dataset: the $1/2^-$, $3/2^-$, and $5/2^+$ partial waves were also found to contribute significantly.