Missing-mass measurement of the 12C(K−, K+) reaction at 1.8 GeV/c with the SKS spectrometer

Abstract

We performed a measurement of the inclusive missing-mass spectrum of the 12C(K−, K+) reaction at an incident beam momentum of 1.8 GeV/c. This measurement was carried out by using the Superconducting Kaon Spectrometer (SKS) and the K1.8 beamline spectrometer at the Hadron Experimental Facility in J-PARC. From the missing-mass of the 12C(K−, K+) reaction, the binding energy of a Ξ− hyperon in a core 11B nucleus, $B_{\Xi ^-}$, can be calculated. Our experimental setup yielded a good energy resolution of 8.2 MeV (FWHM), which allowed us to observe significant enhancements in the proximity of the $^{12}_{\Xi }$Be production threshold region. In order to extract information from the missing-mass spectrum, we employed several fitting parameters assumptions. A good agreement with the spectrum shape was obtained by adding two Gaussian functions, with the constant experimental resolution for the Ξ-hypernuclear states, to the background distribution. The peak positions were obtained to be $B_{\Xi ^-} = 8.9 \pm 1.4$ (stat.) $^{+3.8}_{-3.1}$ (syst.) MeV and $B_{\Xi ^-} = -2.4 \pm 1.3$ (stat.) $^{+2.8}_{-1.2}$ (syst.) MeV. Another model assumption, one Breit-Wigner function with $B_{\Xi ^-} = -2.7 \pm 2.2$ (stat.) $^{+0.5}_{-0.7}$ (syst.) MeV and Γ = 4.1 ± 2.1 (stat.) $^{+1.2}_{-0.7}$ (syst.) MeV, also yielded a similar χ2 value.