Search for Odderon-Induced Contributions to Exclusive pi^0 Photoproduction at HERA

Abstract

A search for contributions to the reaction ep-> e pi^0 N^* from photon-Odderon fusion in the photoproduction regime at HERA is reported, at an average photon-proton centre-of-mass energy <W> = 215 GeV. The measurement proceeds via detection of the pi^0 decay photons, a leading neutron from the N^* decay, and the scattered electron. No pi^0 signal is observed and an upper limit on the cross section for the photon-Odderon fusion process of sigma(gamma p -> pi^0 N^*) < 49 nb at the 95% confidence level is derived, integrated over the experimentally accessible range of the squared four-momentum transfer at the nucleon vertex 0.02 < |t| < 0.3 Gev^2. This excludes a recent prediction from a calculation based on a non-perturbative QCD model of a photon-Odderon fusion cross section above 200 nb.