Measurement of the invariant mass distributions for the pp -> ppeta reaction at excess energy of Q = 16.4 MeV

The proton-proton and proton-eta invariant mass distributions have been determined for the pp -> ppeta reaction at an excess energy of Q = 16.4 MeV. The measurement was carried out using the COSY-11 detector setup and the proton beam of the cooler synchrotron COSY. The shapes of the determined invariant mass distributions are similar to those of the pp -> ppeta reaction and reveal an enhancement for large relative proton-proton momenta. This result, together with the fact that the proton-eta interaction is much stronger that the proton-eta interaction, excludes the hypothesis that the observed enhancement is caused by the interaction between the proton and the meson.