Protonium annihilation densities in a unitary coupled channel model

TL;DR

This paper develops a unitary coupled channel model to analyze low energy proton-antiproton interactions, revealing quasi-bound states and detailing protonium annihilation densities, offering insights beyond traditional optical models.

Contribution

It introduces a novel unitary coupled channel approach to describe protonium states and annihilation densities, highlighting differences from optical model predictions.

Findings

Identification of deeper quasi-bound nuclear states

Detailed description of protonium annihilation densities

Differences with optical model predictions

Abstract

We consider a unitary coupled channel model to describe the low energy proton-antiproton scattering and the lower Coulomb-like protonium states. The existence of deeper quasi-bound states of nuclear nature is found to be a consequence of the experimental data. The properties of these states as well as the protonium annihilation densities are described and the difference with respect to the optical models description are manifested.