Mass-dependent cuts in longitudinal phase space

TL;DR

This paper introduces a mass-dependent cut method in longitudinal phase space analysis to enhance reaction mechanism separation in photoproduction, improving hadron selection while preserving angular distribution information.

Contribution

It presents a novel mass-dependent cut technique in longitudinal phase space that optimizes reaction selection and maintains data integrity for observable extraction.

Findings

Mass-dependent cuts improve hadron production selection.

The method preserves angular distribution information.

Enhanced separation of reaction mechanisms.

Abstract

Longitudinal phase space analyses as introduced by van Hove provided a simplified method of separating different reaction production mechanisms. Cuts in the longitudinal phase space can help to select specific reaction kinematics but also induce nonflat acceptance effects in angular distributions. We show that in photoproduction reactions dominated by t-channel exchanges, selection of meson or baryon production over a large mass range can be optimized through calculating mass-dependent cut limits compared to cuts on a van Hove plot sector alone. A cut is presented that improves this selection of one type of hadron production by rejecting another. In addition we demonstrate that using cuts in longitudinal phase space preserves sufficient information to reliably extract observables from the angular distribution of the final state particles.