Modification of the<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi>ω</mml:mi></mml:math>-Meson Lifetime in Nuclear Matter

M. Kotulla, D. Trnka, P. Mühlich, G. Anton, J. C. S. Bacelar, O. Bartholomy, D. Bayadilov, Y. A. Beloglazov, R. Bogendörfer, R. Castelijns

Abstract

Information on hadron properties in the nuclear medium has been derived from the photoproduction of $\ensuremath{\omega}$ mesons on the nuclei C, Ca, Nb, and Pb using the Crystal Barrel/TAPS detector at the ELSA tagged photon facility in Bonn. The dependence of the $\ensuremath{\omega}$-meson cross section on the nuclear mass number has been compared with three different types of models: a Glauber analysis, a Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck analysis of the Giessen theory group, and a calculation by the Valencia theory group. In all three cases, the inelastic $\ensuremath{\omega}$ width is found to be $130--150\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{MeV}/{c}^{2}$ at normal nuclear matter density for an average 3-momentum of $1.1\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}/c$. In the rest frame of the $\ensuremath{\omega}$ meson, this inelastic $\ensuremath{\omega}$ width corresponds to a reduction of the $\ensuremath{\omega}$ lifetime by a factor $\ensuremath{\approx}30$. For the first time, the momentum dependent $\ensuremath{\omega}N$ cross section has been extracted from the experiment and is in the range of 70 mb.

Locations

• Physical Review Letters - View
• arXiv (Cornell University) - View - PDF
• PubMed - View
• DataCite API - View