Photoproduction of K* meson off the proton target with the Regge contributions

TL;DR

This paper models K* meson photoproduction off protons using a combined Feynman-Regge approach, successfully matching experimental data and providing predictions for future experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel interpolation scheme between Feynman and Regge propagators for t-channel meson exchanges in K* photoproduction.

Findings

Qualitative agreement with CLAS data on differential cross sections

Feynman-Regge interpolation is crucial for accurate modeling across energies

Provides predictions for total cross sections and photon-beam asymmetry

Abstract

We investigate the K* Lambda(1116) photoproduction off the proton target, employing the tree-level Born approximation within the effective Lagrangian approach. We take into account the kappa, K, and K* exchanges in the t channel in addition to the ground-state nucleon- and hyperon-pole contributions in the s and u channels with the gauge-invariant form-factor scheme. The nucleon and hyperon resonances, D_13(2080) and Sigma*(1385) are also included. We take into account the Regge trajectories of the strange-mesons for the t-channel contributions in such a way that the Feynman and Regge propagators are interpolated smoothly for the relevant photon energy region. We provide numerical results for the differential cross sections, which result in qualitatively good agreement with the presently available experimental data from CLAS collaboration at Jefferson laboratory. It turns out that the Feynman-Regge interpolation for the meson exchanges play a critical role in reproducing the data simultaneously for the low and relatively high energy regions. We also compute the total cross sections, momentum-transfer dependence of the differential cross sections in the t-channel, and the photon-beam asymmetry as useful guides for future experiments.