Photoproduction of Neutral Rho Mesons from Complex Nuclei

Abstract

We present results of measurements on photoproduction of $\rho$ mesons. Analysis of ${10}^6$ measured $\rho$ events in a four-dimensional data matrix $\frac{d\sigma (A, m, p, t_{\perp })}{d\Omega \mathrm{dm}}$ with dimensions 14×20×10×20 yields precise information on nuclear density distributions for $\rho$ production. We obtain for the Woods-Saxon radii $R\left(A\right)=(1.12\mathrm{}\pm 0.02)A^{\frac{1}{3}}$ and, using the vector dominance model, ${\sigma }_{\rho N}=26.7\mathrm{}\pm 2.0$ mb and $\frac{{{\gamma }_{\rho }}^2}{4\pi }=0.57\mathrm{}\pm 0.10$.