Single-pion production in pp collisions at 0.95 GeV/c (I)

The single-pion production reactions pp → dπ+, pp → npπ+ and pp → ppπ0 were measured at a beam momentum of 0.95GeV/c ( T p ≈ 400MeV) using the short version of the COSY-TOF spectrometer. The implementation of a central calorimeter provided particle identification, energy determination and neutron detection in addition to time-of-flight and angle measurements. Thus, all pion production channels were recorded with 1-4 overconstraints. The total and differential cross-sections obtained are compared to previous data and theoretical calculations. Main emphasis is put on the discussion of the ppπ0 channel, where we obtain angular distributions different from previous experimental results, however, partly in good agreement with recent phenomenological and theoretical predictions. In particular, we observe very large anisotropies for the π0 angular distributions in the kinematical region of small relative proton momenta revealing there a dominance of proton spinflip transitions associated with π0 s and d partial waves and emphasizing the important role of π0 d-waves. © Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag 2006.