Elastic \rho' and \phi Meson Photo- and Electroproduction with Non-Resonant Background

Abstract

The backgrounds due to the direct diffractive dissociation of the photon into the ${\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}$ as well as $K^{+}{K}^{-}$ pairs to the "elastic" diffractive ${\rho }^{\prime }$ and $\varphi$ mesons production in electron-proton collisions are calculated. It is shown that the role of background and background-resonant interference contributions is very important in experimental distribution of $M_{{\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}}$ in the ${\rho }^{\prime }$ mass region. The amplitude for the background process is proportional to the $\pi$-meson - proton or K-meson - proton cross sections. Therefore, describing the HERA data, one can estimate $\sigma (\pi p)$ and $\sigma (Kp)$ at energies higher than the region of direct measurements.

Comments: 11 pages, LaTeX, 5 figures in 9 additional eps files