A comparison of system produced in the reactions meson +p→3 mesons + p

A comparison is made of the low-mass three-meson systems (πππ), (Kππ), (π K K ) and ( K K K ) diffractively produced in the reaction meson + proton → three mesons + proton. Several striking similarities and a few important differences are observed: (i) the reactions are consistent with the assumption that the three mesons decay entirely into a 0− meson and a 0+, 1− or 2+ resonance; (ii) the three-meson mass spectra have a peak ≈ 250 MeV above the effective threshold Meff of the dominant decay mode and then fall off approximately as (mass)−3;(iii) the average spin 〈J〉 = 0.55 + 1.1 Qeff, where Qeff = M - Meff; (iv) the average orbital angular momentum 〈l〉 increases according to 〈l〉 = 0.75 Qeff; (v) the three-meson states are produced dominantly in unnatural spin-parity states and no evidence for their being resonant is found; (vi) the only natural spin-parity states found are the well-established 2+ resonances A2 and K∗ (1420); they have similar properties to the non-resonant unnatural parity states except for a dip at t = 0 in the dσ/dt distributions; (vii) both the unnatural and natural spin-parity states are produced mostly by an exchange of natural parity; (viii) there is evidence for two types of production mechanism with different polarization properties, one approximately conserving helicity in the t-channel and the other in the s-channel.