Abstract
Information on hadron properties in the nuclear medium has been derived from the photoproduction of mesons on the nuclei C, Ca, Nb, and Pb using the Crystal Barrel/TAPS detector at the ELSA tagged photon facility in Bonn. The dependence of the -meson cross section on the nuclear mass number has been compared with three different types of models: a Glauber analysis, a Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck analysis of the Giessen theory group, and a calculation by the Valencia theory group. In all three cases, the inelastic width is found to be at normal nuclear matter density for an average 3-momentum of . In the rest frame of the meson, this inelastic width corresponds to a reduction of the lifetime by a factor . For the first time, the momentum dependent cross section has been extracted from the experiment and is in the range of 70 mb.
- Received 10 December 2007
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.192302
©2008 American Physical Society