Photoproduction of K* meson off the proton target with the Regge contributions

Abstract

We investigate the K*Λ(1116) photoproduction off the proton target by employing the treelevel Born approximation within the effective Lagrangian approach. We take into account the κ, K, and K* exchanges in the t channel in addition to the ground-state nucleon- and hyperon-pole contributions in the s and the u channels with the gauge-invariant form-factor scheme. The nucleon and the hyperon resonances, D 13(2080) and Σ*(1385), are also included. We take into account the Regge trajectories of the strange mesons for the t-channel contributions in such a way that the Feynman and Regge propagators are interpolated smoothly for the relevant photon energy region. We provide numerical results for the differential cross sections, which result in qualitatively good agreement with the presently available experimental data from the CLAS collaboration at Jefferson laboratory. The Feynman-Regge interpolation for the meson exchanges turns out to play a critical role in reproducing the data simultaneously for the low and the relatively high energy regions. We also compute the total cross sections, momentum-transfer dependence of the differential cross sections in the t-channel, and the photon-beam asymmetry as useful guides for future experiments.