Light meson emission in (anti)proton induced reactions

TL;DR

This paper explores high-energy (anti)proton reactions with nuclei, focusing on collinear light meson emission, which enables new QCD tests, neutron beam production, and resonance studies through a factorized cross section approach.

Contribution

It introduces a method to calculate collinear light meson emission in (anti)proton reactions, extending QED-like ISR techniques to hadronic processes for the first time.

Findings

Derived factorized formulas for meson emission probabilities.

Proposed use of meson emission to produce high-energy (anti)neutron beams.

Presented multiplicity distributions for neutral and charged mesons.

Abstract

Reactions induced by high energy antiprotons on proton on nuclei are accompanied with large probability by the emission of a few mesons. Interesting phenomena can be observed and QCD tests can be performed, through the detection of one or more mesons. The collinear emission from high energy (anti)proton beams of a hard pion or vector meson, can be calculated similarly to the emission of a hard photon from an electron \cite{Kuraev:2013izz}. This is a well known process in QED, and it is called the "Quasi-Real Electron method", where the incident particle is an electron and a hard photon is emitted leaving an 'almost on shell' electron impinging on the target \cite{Baier:1973ms}. Such process is well known as Initial State Emission (ISR) method of scanning over incident energy, and can be used, in the hadron case, to produce different kind of particles in similar kinematical conditions. In case of emission of a charged light meson, $\pi$ or $\rho$-meson, in proton-proton(anti-proton) collisions, the meson can be deviated in a magnetic field and detected. The collinear emission (along the beam direction) of a charged meson may be used to produce high energy (anti)neutron beams. This can be very useful to measure the difference of the cross sections of (anti)proton and (anti)neutron scattering from the target and may open the way for checking sum rules with antiparticles. Hard meson emission allows also to enhance the cross section when the energy loss from one of the incident particles lowers the total energy up to the mass of a resonance. The cross section can be calculated, on the basis of factorized formulas, where the probability of emission of the light mesons multiplies the cross section of the sub-process. Multiplicity distributions for neutral and charged meson production are also given.