We discuss the possibility to study the in-medium changes of the properties of the omega meson in reactions on ordinary nuclei with elementary electromagnetic probes. We present a tree-level calculation of the elementary gamma p -> omega p process which is extended to describe also the photoproduction of medium-modified omega mesons in nuclear matter. Using a semi-classical transport approach we obtain results for e+e- and pi0 gamma photoproduction off heavy nuclei in the invariant mass range of the rho and omega mesons. Both reactions are also studied experimentally and are presently being analyzed at accelerator facilities in Bonn and at Jefferson Lab. We show that the in-medium signals expected can be as large as those obtained in heavy-ion reactions.
We investigate the feasibility of studying in-medium properties of the $omega$ meson in photoproduction experiments via the decay $omegarightarrowpi^0gamma$. We use the GiBUU transport model to compare different methods of obtaining in-medium information, such as the invariant mass spectrum, transparency ratio, excitation function and momentum spectrum. We show that the final-state interaction of the pion poses a major obstacle for the interpretation of the invariant mass spectrum. The other three observables turn out to be fairly independent of final-state interactions and thus can give access to the $omega$s in-medium properties.
We discuss the effect of changes in meson properties in a nuclear medium on physical observables, notably, $J/Psi$ dissociation on pion and $rho$ meson comovers in relativistic heavy ion collisions, and the prediction of the $omega$-, $eta$- and $eta$-nuclear bound states.
Properties of six-quark dibaryons in nuclear medium are considered by example of $A=6$ nuclei within the three-cluster $alpha+2N$ model. Dibaryon production in nuclei leads to the appearance of a three-body force between the dibaryon and nuclear core. This non-conventional scalar force is shown to provide an additional attractive contribution to the three-body binding energy. This three-body contribution improves noticeably agreement between theoretical results and experimental data for the majority of observables. The most serious difference between the traditional $NN$-force models and the dibaryon-induced model is found for the nucleon momentum distribution, the latter model providing a strong enrichment of the high-momentum components both for $^6$Li and $^6$He cases.
We give a short review of the quark-meson coupling (QMC) model, the quark-based model of finite nuclei and hadron interactions in a nuclear medium, highlighting on the relationship with the Skyrme effective nuclear forces. The model is based on a mean field description of nonoverlapping nucleon MIT bags bound by the self-consistent exchange of Lorentz-scalar-isoscalar, Lorentz-vector-isoscalar, and Lorentz-vector-isovector meson fields directly coupled to the light quarks up and down. In conventional nuclear physics the Skyrme effective forces are very popular, but, there is no satisfactory interpretation of the parameters appearing in the Skyrme forces. Comparing a many-body Hamiltonian generated by the QMC model in the zero-range limit with that of the Skyrme force, it is possible to obtain a remarkable agreement between the Skyrme force and the QMC effective interaction. Furthermore, it is shown that 3-body and higher order N-body forces are naturally included in the QMC-generated effective interaction.
The photo production of $omega$ mesons on the nuclei C, Ca, Nb and Pb has been measured using the Crystal Barrel/TAPS detector at the ELSA tagged photon facility in Bonn. The dependence of the $omega$ meson cross section on the nuclear mass number has been compared with three different types of models, a Glauber analysis, a BUU analysis of the Giessen theory group and a calculation by the Valencia theory group. In all three cases, the inelastic $omega$ width is found to be $130-150 rm{MeV/c^2}$ at normal nuclear matter density for an average 3-momentum of 1.1 GeV/c. In the restframe of the $omega$ meson, this inelastic $omega$ width corresponds to a reduction of the $omega$ lifetime by a factor $approx 30$. For the first time, the momentum dependent $omega$N cross section has been extracted from the experiment and is in the range of 70 mb.