Study of in-medium $\eta^\prime$ properties in the ($\gamma$, ${\eta^\prime}p$) reaction on nuclei

TL;DR

This study investigates how the properties of the $ extprime$ meson change inside nuclei by analyzing near-threshold photoproduction reactions, highlighting the sensitivity of kinetic energy distributions to in-medium modifications and the importance of optical potentials.

Contribution

The paper provides a detailed collision model analysis of $ extprime$ photoproduction on nuclei, emphasizing the sensitivity of observables to in-medium mass shifts and optical potentials, aiding future experimental interpretation.

Findings

Two-step rescattering has minimal impact on $ extprime p$ production.

Kinetic energy distributions are highly sensitive to $ extprime$ in-medium mass shifts.

Optical potentials significantly influence outgoing proton energies.

Abstract

We study the near-threshold photoproduction of $\eta^\prime$ mesons from nuclei in coincidence with forward going protons in the kinematical conditions of the Crystal Barrel/TAPS experiment, recently performed at ELSA. The calculations have been performed within a collision model based on the nuclear spectral function. The model accounts for both the primary ${\gamma}p \to {\eta^\prime}p$ process and the two-step intermediate nucleon rescattering processes as well as the effect of the nuclear $\eta^\prime$ mean-field potential. We calculate the exclusive $\eta^\prime$ kinetic energy distributions for the $^{12}$C($\gamma$, ${\eta^\prime}p$) reaction for different scenarios of $\eta^\prime$ in-medium modification. We find that the considered two-step rescattering mechanism plays an insignificant role in ${\eta^\prime}p$ photoproduction off the carbon target. We also demonstrate that the calculated $\eta^\prime$ kinetic energy distributions in primary photon--proton ${\eta^\prime}p$ production reveal strong sensitivity to the depth of the real ${\eta^\prime}$ potential at normal nuclear matter density (or to the ${\eta^\prime}$ in-medium mass shift) in the studied incident photon energy regime. Therefore, such observables may be useful to help determine the above ${\eta^\prime}$ in-medium renormalization from the comparison of the results of our calculations with the data from the CBELSA/TAPS experiment. In addition, we show that these distributions are also strongly influenced by the momentum-dependent optical potential, which the outgoing participant proton feels inside the carbon nucleus. This potential should be taken into account in the analysis of these data with the aim to obtain information on the ${\eta^\prime}$ modification in cold nuclear matter.