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Feasibility studies of the pbar p -->pi0e+e- electromagnetic channel at PANDA

The proton is described by the electric G_E and magnetic G_M form factors which characterise its internal structure. The way to measure the proton form factors consists in measuring the angular distribution of the e-p elastic scattering accessing the so-called Space-Like region where q^2<0. Using the crossed channel pbar p<-->e+e-, one accesses another kinematical region, the so-called Time-Like region where q^2>0. However, due to the pbar p<-->e+e- threshold q^2_{th}, only the kinematical domain q^2>q^2_{th}>0 is available. To access the unphysical region, one may use the pbar p --> pi0e+e- reaction where the pi0 takes away a part of the system energy allowing q^2 to be varied between q^2_{th} and almost 0. This thesis aims to show the feasibility of such measurements with the PANDA detector which will be installed on the antiproton ring at the FAIR facility at Darmstadt. To describe the pbar p --> pi0e+e- reaction, a Lagrangian based approach is developed. The 5-fold differential cross section is determined and related to linear combinations of hadronic tensors. Under the assumption of one nucleon exchange, the hadronic tensors are expressed in terms of the 2 complex proton electromagnetic form factors. An extraction method which provides an access to the proton electromagnetic form factor ratio R=|G_E|/|G_M| and for the first time in an unpolarized experiment to the cosine of the phase difference is developed. Such measurements have never been performed in the unphysical region. Extended simulations were performed to show how the ratio R and the cosine can be extracted from the positron angular distribution. Furthermore, a model is developed for the pbar p-->pi0pi+pi- background reaction considered as the most dangerous one. The background contribution can be reduced to the percent level or even less. The corresponding signal efficiency ranges from a few % to 30%. The precision on the determination of the ratio R and of the cosine is determined using the expected counting rates via Monte Carlo method. A part of this thesis is also dedicated to more technical work with the study of the prototype of the electromagnetic calorimeter and the determination of its resolution.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:CCSD/oai:tel.archives-ouvertes.fr:tel-00662455
Date19 December 2011
CreatorsBoucher, Jérôme
PublisherUniversité Paris Sud - Paris XI
Source SetsCCSD theses-EN-ligne, France
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypePhD thesis

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