Four- and five-body K +p interactions at 2.11, 2.31, 2.53 and 2.72 GeV/ c

Abstract

K +p interactions with production of 2 or 3 pions have been studied at 2.11, 2.31, 2.53 and 2.72 GeV/ c incident K + momenta. The cross sections are given for different reaction channels and for the production of resonances: K ∗(892), Δ(1231), η o, ω o and ϱ . An analysis of the enhancement in the K ππ mass distributions around 1.26 GeV shows that at least a part of this enhancement is due to non-diffractive production of a resonance Q with mass M = 1.260 GeV and width Γ = 0.047 GeV. A study of the production and decay angular distributions of Δ ++ and K ∗o → K +π − indicates that the reaction K + p → K ∗ Δ is dominated by pion exchange but this mechanism is not sufficient to obtain a good description of the data. A dependence of the shape of Δ ++ on the momentum transfer is observed.