Study of the near threshold pp-->ppK+K- reaction in view of the K+K final state interaction

TL;DR

This study investigates the pp-->ppK+K- reaction near threshold energies, revealing discrepancies with theoretical models and estimating the K+K- scattering length through novel low-energy invariant mass analysis.

Contribution

It provides the first estimation of the K+K- scattering length using low-energy invariant mass distributions and generalized Dalitz plot analysis.

Findings

Discrepancy between experimental data and models neglecting kaon interactions.

First estimation of K+K- scattering length from near-threshold data.

Insights into low-energy dynamics of the ppKK system.

Abstract

Measurements of the pp-->ppK+K- reaction, performed near the kinematical threshold with the experiment COSY-11 at the Cooler Synchrotron COSY, reveal a significant discrepancy between obtained excitation function and theoretical expectations neglecting interactions of kaons. In order to deepen our knowledge about the low energy dynamics of the ppKK system we investigated population of events for the pp-->ppK+K- reaction as a function of the invariant masses of two particle subsystems. Based for the first time on the low-energy K+K- invariant mass distributions and the generalized Dalitz plot analysis, we estimated the scattering length for the K+K- interaction.