Measurement of elastic omega photoproduction at HERA

Elastic photoproduction of vector mesons, gamma p --> Vp, has been extensively studied in fixed target experiments at centre-of-mass energies up to W approximate to 20 GeV. The production of rho(0), omega and phi is usually described in the framework of the vector meson dominance model (VDM) [1] and Regge theory [2]. The W dependence of the cross section can be parametrised in Regge theory by the sum of two terms, one due to Pomeron exchange and the other to Reggeon exchange, While the latter falls with W, the former is almost flat, Whereas rho(0) and phi production is predominantly due to Pomeron exchange at all energies, the energy behaviour of omega production investigated before HERA suggests a non-negligible contribution from Reggeon exchange. It is therefore of interest to analyse omega photoproduction at HERA, where Pomeron exchange should dominate. More specifically, it is important to establish if the features typical of elastic rho(0) and phi vector meson production are also observed in omega photoproduction at high energy. Among these features are the weak dependence of the elastic cross section on W, the exponential shape of the differential cross section in t, where t is the squared four momentum transferred at the proton vertex, and the observation that the vector meson retains the helicity of the photon (s-channel helicity conservation, SCHC), In addition, a comparison of the photoproduction cross sections of the light vector mesons rho(0) [3, 4], omega and phi [5] at HERA energies allows another check of their diffractive production mechanism. This paper reports a measurement of the photoproduction of omega mesons using the reaction ep --> e omega p with the ZEUS detector at HERA. The omega meson is observed via its decay into pi(+)pi(-)pi(0)(pi(0) --> gamma gamma) in the kinematic range 70 < W < 90 GeV and p(T)(2) < 0.6 GeV2, where p(T) is the transverse momentum of the omega with respect to the beam axis. For these events the scattered positron was not observed in the detector, thereby restricting the photon virtuality Q(2) to values smaller than 4 GeV2, with a median Q(2) of about 10(-4) GeV2