General Relations
Angular Distribution of Two-Body Decay
Let's begin with a general amplitude for the two-body decay of a state with angular momentum quantum numbers J,m. Specifically, we want to know the amplitude of this state for having daughter 1 with momentum direction
in the center of mass reference frame, and helicity
, while daughter 2 has direction
and helicity
.
Let U be the decay operator from the initial state into the given 2-body final state. Insertion of the complete set of helicity basis vectors gives
We can also describe the angular momentum between the daughters as being L and their spin sum as s. Alternatively, we will label the daughters as having helicities of
and
- projections of the two particles' spins onto their respective momentum directions.
insertion of the complete LS basis set
Substitution of each bra-ket with their respective formulae.
Note that in the event of one daughter being spin-less, the second
Clebsch-Gordan coefficient is 1
Isospin Projections
One must also take into account the various ways isospin of daughters can add up to the isospin quantum numbers of the parent, requiring a term:
where a=1 and b=2, referring to the daughter number. Because an even-symmetric angular wave function (i.e. L=0,2...) imply that 180 degree rotation is equivalent to reversal of daughter identities (a,b becoming b,a) one must write down the symmetrized expression:
Application
Production
Photon-Reggeon-Resonance vertex
Consider the production of the resonance from the photon and reggeon in the reflectivity basis, the eigenstates of the reflectivity operator. (This operator is a combination of parity and
rotation about the normal to the production plane (usually y axis.)
The eigenstates of the reflectivity operator are formed as follows:
such that
The photon linear polarization states turn out to be eigenstates of reflectivity as well:
Let x (y) polarization states be denoted with - (+)
Since the production Hamiltonian should commute with reflectivity:
Acting with the reflectivity operator on initial and final state brings out the reflectivity eigenvalues of the
resonance, photon and reggeon. This result leads to a constraint:
Proton-Reggeon vertex
The amplitude of target proton's emission of an exchange particle, a reggeon, in particular direction and helicity projections can be written as:
Decay