Study of the eta-->e+e-g Decay using WASA-at-COSY Detector System

Abstract

At the turn of October and November 2008, the WASA-at-COSY collaboration performed an experiment to collect data on the eta meson decays in pd-->3He eta reactions. This report presents results of a study of the eta-->e+e-g conversion decay. The desired feature of this decay is that the final state e+e- pairs come from the conversion of a virtual gamma quantum and, therefore, they constitute a rich source of knowledge about the electromagnetic structure of decaying meson. This is a very important characteristic when it comes to study of a short-lived neutral particle like the eta meson, because the classical methods of particle scattering are not applicable here. The analysis performed on one third of the p-d data sample collected using the WASA-at-COSY detector, lead to the extraction of the eta transition form factor as a function of the e+e- mass and to the calculation of the slope parameter, related to the charge radius of the eta meson.