Studying the $\omega$-mass in-medium in $\gamma + A\to \pi^0\gamma +X$ reactions

TL;DR

This study uses simulations to evaluate the feasibility of measuring the in-medium $ ext{omega}$ meson mass via the $ ext{gamma} + A o ext{pi}^0 ext{gamma} + X$ reaction, considering background and detector effects.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed simulation approach to assess the potential for in-medium $ ext{omega}$ mass measurements in photonuclear reactions.

Findings

Final-state interactions have minimal impact on the mass range of interest.

Background contributions from $ ext{gamma} + A o ext{pi}^0 ext{pi}^0 + X$ are small.

Detector resolution effects are manageable for mass determination.

Abstract

Simulations based on a coupled-channel transport model have been performed to analyze the feasibility to study the in-medium $\omega$ mass exploiting the process $\gamma+A\to\pi^0\gamma+X$ for C, Ca and Nb nuclei. The distortions due to final-state interactions of the $\pi^0$ and background contributions from the reaction $\gamma+A\to\pi^0\pi^0+X$ are found to be small in the mass range of interest ($0.6<M_{\pi^0\gamma}<0.8$ GeV). Furthermore, the effect of the detector resolution on the $\pi^0\gamma$-mass determination is discussed.