Further evidence for formation of a narrow baryon resonance with positive strangeness in K+ collisions with Xe nuclei

TL;DR

This paper provides further experimental evidence for a narrow pentaquark baryon resonance with positive strangeness, observed in K+ collisions with Xenon nuclei, confirming earlier findings and refining its intrinsic width.

Contribution

The study offers new experimental confirmation and more precise measurement of a narrow pentaquark resonance in K+ Xe collisions, strengthening evidence for exotic baryons.

Findings

Resonance mass measured at 1537±2 MeV/c^2.

Intrinsic width of the resonance estimated at 0.36±0.11 MeV/c^2.

Statistical significance exceeds 7 sigma.

Abstract

We have continued our investigation of the charge-exchange reaction K^+ Xe --> K^0 p Xe' in the bubble chamber DIANA. In agreement with our previous results based on part of the present statistics, formation of a narrow p K^0 resonance with mass of 1537+-2 MeV/c^2 is observed in the elementary transition K^+ n --> K^0 p on a neutron bound in the Xenon nucleus. Visible width of the peak is consistent with being entirely due to instrumental resolution and allows to place an upper limit on its intrinsic width: \Gamma < 9 MeV/c^2. A more precise estimate of the resonance intrinsic width, \Gamma = 0.36+-0.11 MeV/c^2, is obtained from the ratio between the numbers of resonant and non-resonant charge-exchange events. The signal is observed in a restricted interval of incident K^+ momentum, that is consistent with smearing of a narrow p K^0 resonance by Fermi motion of the target neutron. Statistical significance of the signal is some 7.3, 5.3, and 4.3 standard deviations for the estimators S/sqrt{B}, S/sqrt{S+B}, and S/sqrt{S+2B}, respectively. This observation confirms and reinforces our earlier results, and offers strong evidence for formation of a pentaquark baryon with positive strangeness in the charge-exchange reaction K^+ n --> K^0 p on a bound neutron.