The phi to pi+ pi- decay within a chiral unitary approach

Abstract

Starting from the Chiral Perturbation Theory Lagrangian, but keeping different masses for the charged and neutral mesons, and using a previously developed non-perturbative unitary scheme that generates the lightest meson-meson resonances, we construct K Kbar to K Kbar and K Kbar to pi+ pi- in the vector channel. This allows us to obtain the kaon-loop contribution to the phi-rho mixing and study the phi to pi+pi- decay. The dominant contribution to this decay comes from the phi to gamma to pi+pi- process. However, there can be large interferences with the subdominant contributions coming from phi-rho and phi-omega mixing, or of these two contributions among themselves. As a consequence, a reliable measurement of phi to pi+pi- decay could be used to differentiate between some phi-omega mixing scenarios proposed in the literature.