Photoproduction of the f2 (1270) Meson Using the CLAS Detector

Carver, M.; Celentano, A.; Hicks, K.; Marsicano, L.; Mathieu, V.; Pilloni, A.; Adhikari, K. P.; Adhikari, S.; Amaryan, M. J.; Angelini, G.; Atac, H.; Baltzell, N. A.; Barion, L.; Battaglieri, M.; Bedlinskiy, I.; Benmokhtar, F.; Bianconi, A.; Biselli, A. S.; Bondi, M.; Bossu, F.; Boiarinov, S.; Briscoe, W. J.; Brooks, W. K.; Bulumulla, D.; Burkert, V. D.; Carman, D. S.; Carvajal, J. C.; Chatagnon, P.; Chetry, T.; Ciullo, G.; Clark, L.; Clary, B. A.; Cole, P. L.; Contalbrigo, M.; Crede, V.; D'Angelo, A.; Dashyan, N.; De Vita, R.; Defurne, M.; Deur, A.; Diehl, S.; Djalali, C.; Dugger, M.; Dupre, R.; Egiyan, H.; Ehrhart, M.; Alaoui, A. E.; Fassi, L. E.; Eugenio, P.; Fedotov, G.; Fegan, S.; Filippi, A.; Gavalian, G.; Gevorgyan, N.; Gilfoyle, G. P.; Girod, F. X.; Gothe, R. W.; Griffioen, K. A.; Hafidi, K.; Hakobyan, H.; Hattawy, M.; Hayward, T. B.; Heddle, D.; Holtrop, M.; Huang, Q.; Hyde, C. E.; Ilieva, Y.; Ireland, D. G.; Isupov, E. L.; Jenkins, D.; H. S., Jo; Joo, K.; Joosten, S.; Keller, D.; Khanal, A.; Khandaker, M.; Kim, A.; Kim, C. W.; Klein, F. J.; Kripko, A.; Kubarovsky, V.; Lanza, L.; Leali, M.; Lenisa, P.; Livingston, K.; Macgregor, I. J. D.; Marchand, D.; Mascagna, V.; Mccracken, M. E.; Mckinnon, B.; Meziani, Z. E.; Mokeev, V.; Movsisyan, A.; Munevar, E.; Camacho, C. M.; Nadel-Turonski, P.; Neupane, K.; Niccolai, S.; Niculescu, G.; Osipenko, M.; Ostrovidov, A. I.; Paolone, M.; Pappalardo, L. L.; Paremuzyan, R.; Pasyuk, E.; Phelps, W.; Pogorelko, O.; Prok, Y.; Protopopescu, D.; Ripani, M.; Ritchie, B. G.; Ritman, J.; Rizzo, A.; Rosner, G.; Rowley, J.; Sabatie, F.; Salgado, C.; Schmidt, A.; Schumacher, R. A.; Sharabian, Y. G.; Shrestha, U.; Sokhan, D.; Soto, O.; Sparveris, N.; Stepanyan, S.; Strakovsky, I. I.; Strauch, S.; Tyler, N.; Tyson, R.; Ungaro, M.; Venturelli, L.; Voskanyan, H.; Voutier, E.; Watts, D. P.; Wei, K.; Wei, X.; Yale, B.; Zachariou, N.; Zhang, J.; Zhao, Z. W.

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.082002

The quark structure of the f2(1270) meson has, for many years, been assumed to be a pure quark-antiquark (qq¯) resonance with quantum numbers JPC=2++. Recently, it was proposed that the f2(1270) is a molecular state made from the attractive interaction of two ρ mesons. Such a state would be expected to decay strongly to final states with charged pions due to the dominant decay ρ→π+π-, whereas decay to two neutral pions would likely be suppressed. Here, we measure for the first time the reaction γp→π0π0p, using the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer detector at Jefferson Lab for incident beam energies between 3.6 and 5.4 GeV. Differential cross sections, dσ/dt, for f2(1270) photoproduction are extracted with good precision due to low backgrounds and are compared to theoretical calculations.