Search

An experiment EPECUR, aimed at the search of the cryptoexotic non-strange member of the pentaquark antidecuplet, started its operation at a pion beam line of the ITEP 10 GeV proton synchrotron. The invariant mass range of the interest (1610-1770) MeV will be scanned for a narrow state in the pion-proton and kaon-lambda systems in the formation-type experiment. The scan in the s-channel is supposed to be done by the variation of the incident pi- momentum and its measurement with the accuracy of up to 0.1% with a set of 1 mm pitch proportional chambers located in the first focus of the beam line. The reactions under the study will be identified by a magnetless spectrometer based on wire drift chambers with a hexagonal structure. Because the background suppression in this experiment depends on the angular resolution, the amount of matter in the chambers and setup is minimized to reduce multiple scattering. The differential cross section of the elastic pi-p-scattering on a liquid hydrogen target in the region of the diffractive minimum will be measured with statistical accuracy 0.5% in 1 MeV steps in terms of the invariant mass. For KLambda-production the total cross section will be measured with 1% statistical accuracy in the same steps. An important byproduct of this experiment will be a very accurate study of Lambda polarization. The setup was assembled and tested in December 2008 and in April 2009 we had the very first physics run. About 0.5x10^9 triggers were written to disk covering pion beam momentum range 940-1135 MeV/c., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in the proccedings of DSPIN'09, Dubna, Russia, Sep. 1-5, 2009

The main goal of this proposal is the search for a narrow cryptoexotic nucleon resonance by scanning of the pi- p system invariant mass in the region (1610-1770) MeV with the detection of pi- p and K Lambda decays. The scan is supposed to be done by the variation of the incident pi- momentum and its measurement with the accuracy of up to +-0.1% (better than 1 MeV in terms of the invariant mass in the whole energy range) with a set of proportional chambers located in the first focus of the magnetooptical channel. High sensitivity of the method to the resonance under search is shown. The secondary particles scattered from a liquid hydrogen target are detected by sets of the wire drift chambers equipped with modern electronics. The time scale of the project is about 3 years. The budget estimate including manpower, the apparatus and operation cost, is about 40 million rubles. The beam time required is (4-6) two week runs on "high" (10 GeV/c) flattop of the ITEP proton synchrotron., 16 pages, 10 figures. v2: an acknowledge added