Cross section for charmonium absorption by nucleons

Abstract

The cross section for $J/\ensuremath{\psi}$ absorption by nucleons is studied using a gauged SU(4) hadronic Lagrangian but with empirical particle masses, which has been used previously to study the cross sections for $J/\ensuremath{\psi}$ absorption by pion and $\ensuremath{\rho}$ meson. Including both two-body and three-body final states, we find that with a cutoff parameter of 1 GeV at interaction vertices involving charm hadrons, the $J/\ensuremath{\psi}\ensuremath{-}N$ absorption cross section is at most 5 mb and is consistent with that extracted from $J/\ensuremath{\psi}$ production from both photonuclear and proton-nucleus reactions.