Testing the ϕ-nuclear potential in pion-induced ϕ meson production on nuclei near threshold

The ф meson in nuclear matter from theory and experimental data

“…An analysis combining the ALICE and HAL QCD Collaboration results (in which the former provides a scattering length that is a combination of the ϕN spin 1/2 and 3/2 channels, while the latter gives a result of only the pure spin 3/2 scattering length) even provided evidence for the existence of a ϕN bound state in the spin 1/2 channel [10]. Furthermore, a recent analysis by Paryev [11] of the pion-induced ϕ meson production cross sections on nuclear targets measured at HADES [12] led to a ϕ-nucleus potential depth of 50-100 MeV, which is larger than earlier predictions of hadronic effective theory calculations [1][2][3][4][5] and is also not compatible with results obtained when combining QCD sum rule calculations [13,14] with the newest values of the strangeness sigma term (see for instance Ref. [15] and the references cited therein).…”