# Hadroproduction of the 𝜒₁ and 𝜒₂ States of Charmonium in 800 GeV/c Proton-Silicon Interactions

Charmonium hadroproduction has provided interesting challenges to the understanding of QCD. Early attempts to describe the formation of a $`c\overline{c}`$ bound state, according to the color evaporation  or color singlet  models, did not provide a satisfactory description of the available data. More recently, the Non-Relativistic QCD Factorization Approach , which incorporates in a more rigorous fashion some of the features of the previous models, has provided a more successful description of the process. For any model, a rather crucial test has been the prediction of the relative rate of production for different charmonium states. In particular, when dealing with proton-induced processes, the absence of quark annihilation diagrams and the suppression in Leading Order of $`\chi _1`$ production gluonic diagrams implies rather small values, typically less than 10%, for the ratio of $`\chi _1`$ to $`\chi _2`$ production . The measurement presented here represents a significant contribution to the available data, since it is the first observation of cleanly resolved $`\chi _1`$ and $`\chi _2`$ states in a proton-induced fixed target experiment.

The FNAL E771 experiment utilized a large-acceptance spectrometer  to measure several processes containing muons in the final state. Protons of 800 GeV/c momentum were transported by the Fermilab Proton West beam line to the High Intensity Laboratory, where they hit a 24 mm thick silicon target. Operating at a beam intensity of $`3.6\times 10^7`$ protons per spill-second, the experiment accumulated a total of 6.4 $`\times 10^{11}`$ p-Si interactions. The incoming proton beam trajectory and flux were measured by a six plane silicon detector station. The 0.26 radiation length target was composed of twelve 2 mm silicon foils separated by 4 mm. The target was followed by a microvertex detector consisting of fourteen 300 $`\mu `$m thick silicon planes that, while not used in the analysis presented here, contributed an additional 0.045 X<sub>0</sub> to the target region radiation length.

The spectrometer’s tracking system consisted of seven multi-wire proportional chambers and three drift chambers upstream plus three drift chambers and six combination drift/pad/strip chambers downstream of a dipole analysis magnet which provided an 821 MeV/c $`p_t`$ kick in the horizontal plane. Downstream of the wire chamber system, an electromagnetic calorimeter consisting of an active converter and 396 scintillating glass and lead glass blocks was used for electron/positron identification. The final element of the spectrometer, a set of three planes of resistive plate counters (RPC’s) segmented into 512 readout pads and sandwiched between layers of steel and concrete absorbers, provided muon identification. The material in the absorber walls represented an energy loss of 10 GeV in the central region and 6 GeV in the outer region of the detector for the incident muons.

A dimuon trigger selected events with a $`J/\psi `$ in the final state via the decay $`J/\psi \mu ^+\mu ^{}`$. A trigger muon was defined as the triple coincidence of the *OR* of 2 $`\times `$ 2 pads in the first RPC plane and the *OR* of 6 $`\times `$ 6 pads in the second and third RPC planes in projective arrangements. A dimuon trigger was defined as two such triple coincidences. The trigger reduced the 1.9 MHz interaction rate by a factor of $`10^4`$, selecting approximately 1.3 $`\times 10^8`$ dimuon events to be written to tape.

The seed for muon track reconstruction was provided by the RPC triple coincidences. The roads formed by the pads involved in the coincidences were projected into the rear chamber set, identifying a region in which to search for candidate muon tracks. Muon tracks reconstructed in the rear chamber set were then matched with tracks found in the front chamber set by requiring a good front-rear linking $`\chi ^2`$. Muon pairs were required to come from a common vertex by applying a cut to their distance of closest approach. About fifty thousand dimuon events survived the reconstruction process, quality cuts, and vertex cuts.

Figure 1 shows the resulting dimuon mass spectrum containing peaks corresponding to the $`J/\psi `$, $`\psi (2S)`$, and $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ (inset). Superimposed on the dimuon mass spectrum is a fit to the data obtained with the sum of two Gaussians for the $`J/\psi `$ peak, a single Gaussian for the $`\psi (2S)`$, and the form $`\frac{a}{m_{\mu \mu }^3}exp(bm_{\mu \mu })`$ for the continuum background. The two Gaussians fit to the $`J/\psi `$ peak is a good approximation (as confirmed by Monte Carlo) to a non-constant mass resolution, caused by the confusion associated with increases in hit density near the beam region. The number of $`J/\psi `$’s and $`\psi (2S)`$’s after background subtraction was 11,660 $`\pm `$ 139 and 218 $`\pm `$ 24, respectively .

Events in a window of $`\pm `$ 100 MeV/c<sup>2</sup> around the $`J/\psi `$ mass were refit varying the muon momenta within measurement errors, with the constraint that the invariant mass of the pair be equal to $`J/\psi `$ mass. The resulting dimuon event sample was then inspected to search for $`e^+e^{}`$ pairs that might be the result of conversions of photons from $`\chi J/\psi \gamma `$ decays. Dimuon events which contained pairs of tracks matching the topology of a $`\gamma e^+e^{}`$ conversion in the target region – collinear before the magnet in both bend and non-bend projections, collinear in the non-bend plane and coplanar in the bend plane after the magnet – were then designated as $`\chi `$ decay candidates.

All electron/positron pair candidates were required to satisfy additional conditions. At least one of the two track candidates was required to be associated with an energy deposition in the calorimeter consistent with an electro-magnetic shower. In addition, the total transverse momentum of the $`e^+e^{}`$ pair in the rear of the magnet was required to be zero (within the resolution of the spectrometer) relative to the common $`e^+e^{}`$ trajectory in front of the magnet. To quantify how well a pair fitted the $`\gamma e^+e^{}`$ hypothesis, a $`\chi ^2`$ was formed,

$$\chi ^2=\frac{(a_{x1}a_{x2})^2}{\sigma _{ax1}^2+\sigma _{ax2}^2}+\frac{(a_{y1}a_{y2})^2}{\sigma _{ay1}^2+\sigma _{ay2}^2}+\frac{(b_{y1}b_{y2})^2}{\sigma _{by1}^2+\sigma _{by2}^2}$$
(1)   
where $`a_{x1}`$ and $`a_{x2}`$ are the electron and positron track intercepts at the magnet in the bend plane, $`a_{y1}`$ and $`a_{y2}`$ the track intercepts in the non-bend plane, $`b_{y1}`$ and $`b_{y2}`$ the track slopes in the non-bend plane, and the $`\sigma `$’s are the measurement errors on these quantities. The electron/positron candidate with the smallest $`\chi ^2`$ in a given event was designated as a photon conversion candidate. Additional cuts requiring a good $`\chi ^2`$, the transverse momentum of the parent photon to be between 250 and 700 MeV/c, and the invariant mass squared of the $`e^+e^{}`$ pair to be less than 3000 (MeV/c<sup>2</sup>)<sup>2</sup> were applied to maximize signal to background in the final sample of events containing both a $`J/\psi `$ and a photon conversion.

The $`J/\psi e^+e^{}`$ invariant mass shown in Fig. 2 was calculated using the electron and positron momenta obtained from the tracking system. Clear $`\chi _1`$ and $`\chi _2`$ signals can be seen. The background to the $`\chi _1`$ and $`\chi _2`$ was well-described by uncorrelated $`e^+e^{}`$ and $`J/\psi `$ combinations: the solid line of Fig. 2 was obtained by fitting two Gaussians plus a polynomial background. The polynoimial background was obtained by fitting the mass distributions of $`J/\psi `$’s and $`e^+e^{}`$’s extracted from different events. The numbers of $`\chi _1`$ and $`\chi _2`$ obtained from the fit are 33 $`\pm `$ 9 and 33 $`\pm `$ 10, respectively. The fitted width is 5.2 $`\pm `$ 2.0 MeV/c<sup>2</sup> for both the $`\chi _1`$ and $`\chi _2`$ peaks.

To determine the total cross section for $`\chi _1`$ and $`\chi _2`$ production, the overall acceptance times efficiency for photon conversion and for electron/positron acceptance and recontruction efficiency had to be determined. To accomplish this, a Monte Carlo sample of $`\chi J/\psi \gamma `$, $`J/\psi \mu ^+\mu ^{}`$ decays was generated using Pythia . The photon and the muons were then propagated through a GEANT  simulation of the E771 detector, including $`\gamma `$ conversion, scattering, bremsstrahlung and dE/dx. Hits from the Monte Carlo tracks obtained by this prescription were then inserted into actual dimuon trigger events to simulate realistically backgrounds and losses in pattern recognition due to confusion from noise hits and other tracks. Measured detector efficiencies were also applied to the inserted hits. These hybrid Monte Carlo and data events were analyzed in a manner identical to the data in order to determine acceptances and tracking efficiencies.

Rather than attempting to simulate the electromagnetic calorimeter response to $`e^\pm `$ in detail in a Monte Carlo, the efficiency of matching an electron or positron candidate to a shower in the calorimeter was determined using a large sample of electron/positron pairs from photon conversions in minimum bias events. A sample of $`e^+e^{}`$ pairs with kinematics similar to those of the $`\chi `$ $`e^+e^{}`$ pairs was collected using very tight cuts to ensure an $`e^+e^{}`$ identity. This sample was then subjected to the same constraints as those applied in the $`\chi `$ analysis. The resulting overall acceptance times efficiency (inclusive of conversion probability) for photons from $`\chi `$ decay was determined to be $`(8.25\pm 0.4)\times 10^3`$.

Using the $`\gamma e^+e^{}`$ acceptance and efficiency, the measured branching ratios for $`\chi _1`$ and $`\chi _2`$ into $`J/\psi \gamma `$ , the measured $`J/\psi `$ pN forward cross section  at $`\sqrt{s}`$=38.8 GeV and the number of observed $`\chi _1`$, $`\chi _2`$ and $`J/\psi \mu ^+\mu ^{}`$, the absolute $`\chi _1`$ and $`\chi _2`$ cross sections for $`x_F>0`$ were calculated to be $`\sigma (\chi _1)`$ = 263 $`\pm `$ 69(stat) $`\pm `$ 32 (syst) nb/nucleon and $`\sigma (\chi _2)`$ = 498 $`\pm `$ 143(stat) $`\pm `$ 67 (syst) nb/nucleon, respectively. The main contributions to the systematic errors came from the error on the $`J/\psi `$ cross section (9%), the uncertainty in the knowledge of the cut efficiencies (5%) and the errors on the branching ratios for $`\chi _1`$ (6%) and $`\chi _2`$ (8%) .

Using the production cross sections for $`\chi _1`$ and $`\chi _2`$, the ratio of the $`\chi _1`$ to $`\chi _2`$ production cross sections was determined to be $`\sigma (\chi _1)/\sigma (\chi _2)`$ = 0.53 $`\pm `$ 0.20(stat) $`\pm `$ 0.07(syst). Combining this result with the two previous measurements of $`\chi `$ production by a proton beam , we have computed the world average (shown in Fig. 3) to be $`\sigma (\chi _1)/\sigma (\chi _2)`$ = 0.31 $`\pm `$ 0.14. This figure is consistent with the latest NRQCD estimates of $``$0.3 , where $`\chi _1`$ production was boosted by the inclusion of higher order terms in the velocity expansion .

Finally, the energy dependence of the combined $`\chi _1`$ and $`\chi _2`$ production near threshold was compared to the corresponding quantity for $`J/\psi `$ production. In Ref.  data on $`J/\psi `$ production from seventeen different pN experiments over a large range of center-of-mass energy, $`\sqrt{s}`$ 8 to 52 GeV, were fit as a function of $`\sqrt{s}`$. The $`J/\psi `$ production data near threshold was well represented by the function $`\sigma (\sqrt{s})_{J/\psi }=\sigma _0(1M_{J/\psi }/\sqrt{s})^\beta `$, with $`\sigma _0=1.0\pm 0.1`$ $`\mu `$b/nucleon and $`\beta =11.8\pm 0.5`$. To check whether $`\chi `$ production has similar dynamics as $`J/\psi `$ production, the sum of the $`\chi `$ cross sections have been fit to a similar parameterization with $`\beta `$ fixed to the $`J/\psi `$ value and $`M_\chi `$ replacing $`M_{J/\psi }`$. The result of the fit, shown in Fig. 4, shows the similarity of the $`J/\psi `$ threshold production parametrization to the threshold behavior of the combined $`\chi `$ state cross sections. The fit yields $`\sigma _0=2.3\pm 0.4\mu `$b/nucleon for the asymptotic $`\sigma (\chi )`$ cross section.

We wish to thank Fermilab, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare of Italy, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the Texas Advanced Research Program for their support.

To whom correspondence should be addressed.   
Electronic address: cox@uvahep.phys.virginia.edu