$\eta$ production off the proton in a Regge-plus-chiral quark approach

TL;DR

This paper presents a combined chiral quark and Regge approach to model eta meson production off protons, successfully fitting recent experimental data and showing negligible impact from missing resonances.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hybrid model integrating chiral quark dynamics with Reggeized t-channel exchanges for eta production.

Findings

Successfully describes $ar{ u} p o ar{ u} ext{eta} p$ data.

Reggeized trajectories improve fit to high-energy data.

Missing resonances have negligible contribution.

Abstract

A chiral constituent quark model approach, embodying s- and u-channel exchanges,complemented with a Reggeized treatment for t-channel is presented. A model is obtained allowing data for $\pi^- p \to \eta n$ and $\gamma p \to \eta p$ to be describe satisfactorily. For the latter reaction, recently released data by CLAS and CBELSA/TAPS Collaborations in the system total energy range $1.6 \lesssim W \lesssim 2.8$ GeV are well reproduced due to the inclusion of Reggeized trajectories instead of simple $\rho$ and $\omega$ poles. Contribution from "missing" resonances is found to be negligible in the considered processes.