Photoproduction and Detection of the Two-Meson Bound State

Abstract

We investigate the possibility of the detection of a photoproduced two-pion bound system. The general detection problem is discussed briefly; the branching ratio between $2{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{0}$ and $2{\ensuremath{\gamma}}^{0}$ decay modes is calculated; and the total photoproduction cross section is estimated in terms of the binding energy of the two-pion state both by field-theoretic and by phase-space arguments. We conclude that if the binding energy is of the order of 10 Mev the state should be detectable in photoproduction experiments, and the binding energy should be measurable.