New measurement of the π0 radiative decay width

I. Larin, D. McNulty, E. Clinton, P. Ambrozewicz, D. Lawrence, I. Nakagawa, Y. Prok, A. Teymurazyan, A. Ahmidouch, A. Asratyan, K. Baker, L. Benton, A. M. Bernstein, V. Burkert, P. Cole, P. Collins, D. Dale, S. Danagoulian, G. Davidenko, R. DemirchyanA. Deur, A. Dolgolenko, G. Dzyubenko, R. Ent, A. Evdokimov, J. Feng, M. Gabrielyan, L. Gan, A. Gasparian, S. Gevorkyan, A. Glamazdin, V. Goryachev, V. Gyurjyan, K. Hardy, J. He, M. Ito, L. Jiang, D. Kashy, M. Khandaker, P. Kingsberry, A. Kolarkar, M. Konchatnyi, A. Korchin, W. Korsch, S. Kowalski, M. Kubantsev, V. Kubarovsky, X. Li, P. Martel, V. Matveev, B. Mecking, B. Milbrath, R. Minehart, R. Miskimen, V. Mochalov, S. Mtingwa, S. Overby, E. Pasyuk, M. Payen, R. Pedroni, B. Ritchie, T. E. Rodrigues, C. Salgado, A. Shahinyan, A. Sitnikov, D. Sober, S. Stepanyan, W. Stephens, J. Underwood, A. Vasiliev, V. Vishnyakov, M. Wood, S. Zhou

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101 Scopus citations

Abstract

High precision measurements of the differential cross sections for π0 photoproduction at forward angles for two nuclei, C12 and Pb208, have been performed for incident photon energies of 4.9-5.5GeV to extract the π0→γγ decay width. The experiment was done at Jefferson Lab using the HallB photon tagger and a high-resolution multichannel calorimeter. The π0→γγ decay width was extracted by fitting the measured cross sections using recently updated theoretical models for the process. The resulting value for the decay width is Γ(π0→γγ)=7. 82±0.14(stat)±0.17(syst)eV. With the 2.8% total uncertainty, this result is a factor of2.5 more precise than the current Particle Data Group average of this fundamental quantity, and it is consistent with current theoretical predictions.

Original languageEnglish
Article number162303
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume106
Issue number16
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 20 2011

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Physics and Astronomy

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