KKbar photoproduction from protons

Abstract

We study the contribution of the Drell mechanism driven by K^+ and K^- exchange to the reaction gamma N -> KKbar N. Our calculation implements the full KN and KbarN reaction amplitudes in the form of partial wave amplitudes taken from a meson-exchange model (KN) and a partial wave analysis (KbarN), respectively. Comparing our results to data of the LAMP2 collaboration we observe that the Drell mechanism alone cannot describe the large Lambda(1520) photoproduction rate observed experimentally. We argue that the discrepancy could be due to significant contributions from K*-meson exchange with subsequent excitation of the Lambda(1520) resonance. After adding such contributions to our model a good agreement of the LAMP2 experiment is achieved. When applying the same model to the recent SAPHIR data we find an excellent description of the K^+p spectrum and can determine the parameters of the Lambda(1600) P01 resonance, M_R = 1617 +/- 2 MeV and Gamma_R = 117 +/- 4 MeV, from the K^-p mass distribution.