Near Threshold Photoproduction of<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi mathvariant="italic">η</mml:mi></mml:math>Mesons off the Proton

Abstract

We have measured precise total and differential cross sections for the reaction $\ensuremath{\gamma}p\ensuremath{\rightarrow}p\ensuremath{\eta}$ from threshold to 790 MeV at the MAMI accelerator in Mainz with the neutral meson spectrometer TAPS. Resonance parameters of the ${S}_{11}$(1535) resonance and the electromagnetic coupling $\ensuremath{\gamma}p\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{S}_{11}$ have been extracted from the data. Contributions from the ${D}_{13}$(1520) resonance to $\ensuremath{\eta}$ photoproduction in the threshold region have been identified for the first time via interference terms in the angular distributions.