Polarizabilities from kaon Compton scattering

Abstract

The polarizabilities of light pseudoscalar mesons can be extracted from differential cross sections for Compton scattering near threshold. While this has been accomplished for charged pions employing Primakoff reactions, a corresponding measurement for kaons will be affected by the presence of the $K^*(892)$ resonance not too far from threshold. We propose a method to extend the energy range serviceable for this purpose by reconstructing the $K^*(892)$ contribution model-independently from its $K\pi$ intermediate state, using dispersion theory. We point out that, in contrast to the charged-pion analog, there is likely no strong hierarchy between sum and difference of electric and magnetic dipole polarizabilities; we discuss the sensitivity to disentangling both by improved experimental angular coverage.