<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mi>ϕ</mml:mi></mml:math>-meson photoproduction on hydrogen in the neutral decay mode

Abstract

We report the first measurement of the photoproduction cross section of the $\ensuremath{\phi}$ meson in its neutral decay mode in the reaction $\ensuremath{\gamma}p\ensuremath{\rightarrow}p\ensuremath{\phi}({K}_{S}{K}_{L})$. The experiment was performed with a tagged photon beam of energy $1.6\ensuremath{\le}{E}_{\ensuremath{\gamma}}\ensuremath{\le}3.6$ GeV incident on a liquid hydrogen target of the CLAS spectrometer at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. The $p\ensuremath{\phi}$ final state is identified via reconstruction of ${K}_{S}$ in the invariant mass of two oppositely charged pions and by requiring the missing particle in the reaction $\ensuremath{\gamma}p\ensuremath{\rightarrow}p{K}_{S}X$ to be ${K}_{L}$. The presented results significantly enlarge the existing data on $\ensuremath{\phi}$ photoproduction. These data, combined with the data from the charged decay mode, will help to constrain different mechanisms of $\ensuremath{\phi}$ photoproduction.