The production of neutral vector mesons by bremsstrahlung in electron-positron colliding beams

Abstract

We study the bremsstrahlung production of the ρmeson in the reaction e⁺e^-→ e⁺e^- ρ(→ e⁺e^-π⁺π^-). This reaction gives a C=-1 background which complicates the study of C=+1 two-photon processes at the new colliding-beam facilities. The cross section for the reaction rises from approximately 0.3 nb to 0.7 nb as the beam energy increases from 2 GeV to 15 GeV. From a study of the distributions of the final leptons and pions, we find a suitable choice of cuts which will reduce the event rate down to a small fraction of R. It is not possible to attribute the three-prong events seen at DELCO and PLUTO to this particular production mechanism.