Photoproduction of $\Lambda(1520)$ hyperons from nuclei near the threshold

TL;DR

This paper presents a theoretical study of $ ext{Lambda}(1520)$ hyperon production in photon-nucleus reactions near threshold, highlighting the sensitivity of production to the hyperon's in-medium width and the importance of secondary production channels.

Contribution

It introduces a collision model incorporating primary and secondary production processes to analyze $ ext{Lambda}(1520)$ photoproduction and its dependence on in-medium width.

Findings

Production depends strongly on the in-medium width of $ ext{Lambda}(1520)$.

Secondary pion-nucleon channel significantly contributes to hyperon production.

Results suggest using this method to extract in-medium properties of $ ext{Lambda}(1520)$.

Abstract

We present a theoretical investigation of $\Lambda(1520)$ attenuation in ${\gamma}A$ reactions near the threshold. It is performed in the framework of a collision model based on the nuclear spectral function. The model accounts for both primary photon-nucleon ${\gamma}N \to K\Lambda(1520)$ and secondary pion-nucleon ${\pi}N \to K\Lambda(1520)$ production processes. We calculate the target mass and momentum dependences of the forward $\Lambda(1520)$ hyperon production from nuclei at photon energy of 2 GeV as well as for two options for its in-medium width. We find that the considered dependences are markedly sensitive to this width. Our studies also demonstrate that the secondary channel ${\pi}N \to K\Lambda(1520)$ plays a substantial role in the intermediate momentum $\Lambda(1520)$ photoproduction on nuclei in the chosen kinematics and, hence, is to be taken into account in the analysis of $\Lambda(1520)$ hyperon photoproduction from nuclei with the aim to get information on its width in the matter.