Inclusive Pion Double Charge Exchange above 0.5 GeV

TL;DR

This paper presents a cascade model to study high-energy pion-induced reactions, focusing on double charge exchange, revealing the diminishing role of conventional mechanisms and the potential significance of exotic processes at energies above 0.7 GeV.

Contribution

The study introduces a detailed cascade model for pion reactions above 0.5 GeV, highlighting the decreasing importance of conventional DCX mechanisms and the emergence of exotic processes.

Findings

Conventional DCX mechanisms decrease rapidly above 0.7 GeV.

Pion production significantly influences high-energy reactions.

Exotic mechanisms may dominate at energies above 0.7 GeV.

Abstract

A cascade model has been developed to study pion induced multichannel reactions (quasielastic, SCX, DCX, absorption and pion production) at pion energies above 0.5 GeV. Special attention has been paid to pion double charge exchange. Pion production is a determinant feature in the high energy pion nucleus reactions, and the DCX signal not related to pion production is sizeable only at forward angles and for high energy outgoing pions. The contribution to DCX of the conventional mechanism, with two quasielastic SCX steps decreases very fast as a function of the energy and reaches very low values at energies above 0.7 GeV. This opens the opportunity of having sizeable contributions of exotic mechanisms that are negligible at the delta resonance energies.