Central exclusive chi(c) meson production at the Tevatron revisited.

Harland-Lang, L.A.; Khoze, V.A.; Ryskin, M.G.; Stirling, W.J.

Abstract

Motivated by the recent experimental observation of exclusive χc events at the Tevatron, we revisit earlier studies of central exclusive scalar χc0 meson production, before generalising the existing formalism to include χc1 and χc2 mesons. Although χc0 production was previously assumed to be dominant, we find that the χc1 and χc2 rates for the experimentally considered χc→J/ψγ→μ+μ−γ decay process are in fact comparable to the χc0 rate. We have developed a new Monte Carlo event generator, SuperCHIC, which models the central exclusive production of the three χc states via this decay chain, and have explored possible ways of distinguishing them, given that their mass differences are not resolvable within the current experimental set-up. Although we find that the severity of current experimental cuts appears to preclude this, the acceptance does not change crucially between the three states and so our conclusions regarding the overall rates remain unchanged. This therefore raises the interesting possibility that exclusive χc1 and χc2 production has already been observed at the Tevatron.

Citation

Harland-Lang, L., Khoze, V., Ryskin, M., & Stirling, W. (2010). Central exclusive chi(c) meson production at the Tevatron revisited. The European Physical Journal C, 65(3-4), 433-448. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-009-1214-9

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Nov 24, 2009
• Publication Date: 2010-02
• Deposit Date: Jan 23, 2012
• Journal: European Physical Journal C: Particles and Fields
• Print ISSN: 1434-6044
• Electronic ISSN: 1434-6052
• Publisher: SpringerOpen
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 65
• Issue: 3-4
• Pages: 433-448
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-009-1214-9