Omega Electroproduction

Abstract

The differential cross section for p(e, e′ω)p has been studied at Q2 ~ 5.5 (GeV/c)2. Here Q2 represents the four momentum squared of the virtual photon in the excitation of baryonic resonances by an electron projectile. In order to extract the ω-meson differential cross section from the JLAB data, the data was compared to a full Monte Carlo simulation of the detector based on events generated for omega production in a way that the production cross section was varied to achieve a match to the data. The bin selected for this procedure takes into account the measure of robustness of the stripping of the ω peak from the multi-pion background as well as the statistics in the measured data and the Monte Carlo simulation of the signal and background physics. An error estimation technique for the cross section was based on determining the dependence of the extracted cross section parameters on the experimental set-up (including parameters for the spectrometer, target beam geometeries and performance). We compare our results with a Regge-based model for hadronic content in the t-channel exchange of a photon in Q2 region of overlap. There is an extension of this data into a completely new region, which is the highest yet measured.