English

Angular distributions of leptons from J/psi's produced in 920 GeV fixed-target proton-nucleus collisions

High Energy Physics - Experiment 2009-04-24 v1

Abstract

A study of the angular distributions of leptons from decays of J/psi's produced in p-C and p-W collisions at sqrt{s}=41.6 GeV has been performed in the Feynman-x region -0.34 < x_F < 0.14 and for transverse momentum up to 5.4 GeV/c. The data were collected by the HERA-B experiment at the HERA proton ring of the DESY laboratory. The results, based on a clean selection of 2.3 x 10^5 J/psi's reconstructed in both the e^+ e^- and mu^+ mu^- decay channels, indicate that J/psi's are produced with longitudinal polarization. The magnitude of the effect is maximal at low p_T. For p_T >1 GeV/c a significant dependence on the reference frame is found: the polar anisotropy is more pronounced in the Collins-Soper frame and almost vanishes in the helicity frame, where, instead, a significant azimuthal anisotropy arises.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0901.1015,
  title  = {Angular distributions of leptons from J/psi's produced in 920 GeV fixed-target proton-nucleus collisions},
  author = {B Collaboration},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0901.1015},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

9 pages, 3 figures, 8 tables