Formation of $\phi$ mesic nuclei

TL;DR

This paper investigates the formation and structure of $3e$ mesic nuclei to understand in-medium modifications of the $3e$ meson spectral function, analyzing various reactions and the effects of medium uncertainties.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of $3e$ mesic nuclei formation considering different reaction channels and medium effects, highlighting the conditions for observable spectral features.

Findings

Peak structures may be observed with strong attractive potentials.

Strong absorptive interactions make peaks difficult to detect.

Uncertainties in ${ar K}$ selfenergy significantly affect $3e$-nucleus interaction predictions.

Abstract

We study the structure and formation of the $\phi$ mesic nuclei to investigate the in-medium modification of the $\phi$-meson spectral function at finite density. We consider (${\bar p},\phi$), ($\gamma,p$) and ($\pi^-,n$) reactions to produce a $\phi$-meson inside the nucleus and evaluate the effects of its medium modifications to the reaction cross sections. We also estimate the consequences of the uncertainties of the ${\bar K}$ selfenergy in medium to the $\phi$-nucleus interaction. We find that it may be possible to see a peak structure in the reaction spectra for the strong attractive potential cases. On the other hand, for strong absorptive interaction cases with relatively weak attractions, it is very difficult to observe clear peaks and we may need to know the spectrum shape in a wide energy region to deduce the properties of $\phi$.