Phenomenological $ \pi N \to \pi \pi N $ Amplitude and Analysis of Low Energy Data on Total Cross Sections and 1--D Distributions

Abstract

We develop the phenomenological amplitude of the $\pi N \to \pi \pi N$ reaction describing the exchanges of $\Delta$ and $N_{*}$ along with the OPE mechanism. The contribution of the latter contains 4 independent low energy parameters (up to $O(k^{4})$ order). The terms of the polynomial background are added to stand for far resonances and for contact terms originating from the off-mass-shell interactions. These terms are introduced with the account of isotopic, crossing, $ C $, $ P $ and $ T $ symmetries of strong interactions. The data consisting of total cross sections in the energy region $ 0.300 \le P_{Lab} \le 500 $~MeV/c and 1D distributions from the bubble-chamber experiments for three reaction channels were undergoing fittings to determine free parameters of the amplitude. The best solutions are characterized by $ \chi^{2}_{DF} = $ 1.16. At the considered energies the isobar exchanges are found to be more important than OPE. The obtained solutions reveal the need in more precise data and/or in polarization measurements because of large correlations of isobar parameters with the OPE ones. The theoretical solutions were used for modeling the Chew-Low extrapolation and the Olsson-Turner threshold approach. It is shown that the noncritical application of the former results in 100% theoretical errors, the extracted values being in fact the random numbers. The results of the Olsson-Turner method are characterised by significant systematic errors coming from unknown details of isobar physics.