Exclusive production of double light neutral mesons at the $e^+e^-$ colliders

Abstract

In this work we investigate the exclusive production of a pair of light neutral mesons in $e^+e^-$ annihilation, where the final state bears an even $C$-parity. The production processes can be initiated via the photon fragmentation or the non-fragmentation mechanism. While the fragmentation contribution can be rigorously accounted, the non-fragmentation contributions are calculated within the framework of collinear factorization, where only the leading-twist light-cone distribution amplitudes (LCDAs) of mesons are considered. Mediately solely by the non-fragmentation mechanism, the production rates of double light neutral pseudoscalar mesons are too small to be observed at the commissioning $e^+e^-$ facilities. In contrast, the production rates of a pair of light neutral vector mesons are greatly amplified owing to the significant kinematic enhancement brought by the fragmentation mechanism. It is found that, at $\sqrt{s}=3.77$ GeV, after including the destructive interference between the non-fragmentation and fragmentation contributions, the production rates for $e^+e^-\to \rho^{0}\rho^{0}$ and $\rho^0\omega$ can be lowered by about 10\% and 30\% relative to the fragmentation predictions. Future precise measurement of these exclusive double neutral vector meson production channels at {\tt BESIII} experiment may provide useful constraints on the LCDAs of light vector mesons.