# Final state interaction in near-threshold meson productionSupported by Forschungszentrum Jülich

a It was predicted by Watson and Migdal  that close to threshold the energy dependence of the cross section is dominated by the Final State Interaction (FSI). Within the Watson-Migdal approximation the transition amplitude is factorized in terms of the production and FSI amplitudes. Further study were performed by Gottfried and Jackson  with introduction the absorptive correction to the Born amplitude due to the initial and FSI.

Here we address the question what information, other than the FSI parameters, one can extract from data on near-threshold meson production.

As was first proposed by Gell-Mann and Watson  the near-threshold energy dependence of the $`pppp\pi ^0`$ cross section is well reproduced by the Phase-Space (PS) basis and the FSI. Within the nonrelativistic limit the PS for $`n`$-particles is proportional to $`ϵ^{(3n5)/2}`$, where $`ϵ`$ stands for the excess energy and equals to the difference between the invariant collision energy and the total mass of the produced particles. At the range $`0ϵ100`$ MeV the cross section for 3-particle production might increase 4 orders of magnitude due to the PS only. Let us to analyze not the cross section itself but the average reaction amplitude given as

$$|M|=\left(F\sigma /R_3\right)^{1/2}$$
(1)   
where $`F`$ is the flux factor and $`R_3`$ is the three-body PS. Fig. 1a) shows the $`|M|`$ evaluated from the $`pppp\pi ^0`$ data . If the prediction  is true, the data should indicate the FSI between the final protons. Taking the production amplitude as a constant , the $`|M|`$ is factorized in terms of this constant and the $`pp`$ scattering amplitude $`T_{pp}`$. Solid line in Fig. 1 shows the $`T_{pp}`$ from the Nijmegen-93 model  averaged over the available PS. The discrepancy at low $`ϵ`$ is due to the repulsive Coulomb interaction not incorporated in the present calculations.

Similar situation holds for $`pppp\eta `$ reaction. Fig. 1b) shows the reaction amplitude extracted from the data  together with the average $`T_{pp}`$ . Both $`pppp\pi ^0`$ and $`pppp\eta `$ reactions indicate the same strength of the FSI at the same range of the excess energy. Moreover, Fig. 1 obviously illustrates the validity of the Watson-Migdal approximation.

The aim of the near-threshold meson production experiments is not to measure the $`pp`$ scattering amplitude, which can be determined more precisely through the partial waves analysis. The crucial measure for meson production is the production amplitude, which is shown in Fig. 1 with the dashed line. One possible and almost model independent<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1in sense of the Watson-Migdal approximation way to evaluate the production mechanism from the data is to make the FSI corrections based on the known scattering amplitude similar to the procedure we performed for $`pppp\pi ^0`$ and $`pppp\eta `$ reactions. Obviously it is necessary to measure the reaction at wide range of $`0ϵ100`$ MeV in order to escape ambiguity of the analysis.

As an example one can look recent data  on $`pppp\eta ^{}`$ reaction. The average reaction amplitude is shown in Fig. 2a). Neglecting the FSI one can fit the data with the constant $`|M|70`$ fm and motivate that the cross section is reproduced by the PS alone. However, from near-threshold $`\pi ^0`$ and $`\eta `$-production we learned the FSI dominance, which is indicated with the dotted line in Fig. 2a).

Fig. 2b) shows one-pion exchange  calculations with (solid line) and without (dashed line) FSI between the final protons. The model with FSI quite reasonably reproduce the data, however we need more data at the range $`ϵ100`$ MeV for crucial verification.