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. Intermediate between the at-rest initial state of qn J,m and the final plane-wave state is a basis of outgoing waves describing the outgoing 2-body state in a basis of good J,m and helicities. Insertion of the complete set of intermediate basis vectors, and summing over all intermediate J,m gives

Instead of specifying the final-state particles' spin state via their helicities, we can first couple their spins together independent of their momentum direction, to obtain total spin S, then couple S to their relative orbital angular momentum L to obtain their total angular momentum J.

insertion of the complete LS basis set
Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle =\sum_{L,S} \left[ \sqrt{\frac{2J+1}{4\pi}} D_{m \lambda}^{J *}(\Omega,0) \right] \left[ \sqrt{\frac{2L+1}{2J+1}} \left(\begin{array}{cc|c} L & S & J \\ 0 & \lambda & \lambda \end{array}\right) \left(\begin{array}{cc|c} S_1 & S_2 & S \\ \lambda_1 & -\lambda_2 & \lambda \end{array}\right) \right] a_{L S}^{J} }
Substitution of each bra-ket with their respective formulae.
Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \lambda=\lambda_1-\lambda_2}
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:
Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle C^{a,b} = \left(\begin{array}{cc|c} I^a & I^b & I \\ I_z^a & I_z^b & I_z^a+I_z^b \end{array}\right) }
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:
Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle C(L)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}} \left[ C^{a,b} + (-1)^L C^{b,a} \right] }
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 Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \pi}
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