Physics Letters B 789 (2019) 366–372
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Physics Letters B
www.elsevier.com/locate/physletb
Dispersive analysis of the γγ
∗
→ ππ process
Igor Danilkin
∗
, Marc Vanderhaeghen
Institut für Kernphysik & PRISMA Cluster of Excellence, Johannes Gutenberg Universität, D-55099 Mainz, Germany
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received
10 October 2018
Received
in revised form 4 December 2018
Accepted
20 December 2018
Available
online 21 December 2018
Editor:
J.-P. Blaizot
We present a theoretical study of the γγ
∗
→ π
+
π
−
, π
0
π
0
processes from the threshold through the
f
2
(1270) region in the ππ invariant mass. We adopt the Omnès representation in order to account for
rescattering effects in both s- and d-partial waves. For the description of the f
0
(980) resonance, we
implement a coupled-channel unitarity. The constructed amplitudes serve as an essential framework to
interpret the current experimental two-photon fusion program at BESIII. They also provide an important
input for the dispersive analyses of the hadronic light-by-light scattering contribution to the muon’s
anomalous magnetic moment.
© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP
3
.
1. Introduction
The two-photon fusion reaction is a prime example where us-
ing
S-matrix constraints, such as analyticity and unitarity one can
make predictions, which serve as direct input into the Standard
Model calculation of the hadronic light-by-light (HLbL) scattering
contribution to the muon’s anomalous magnetic moment a
μ
. The
HLbL contribution is currently the largest source of uncertainty in
this precision quantity, which at present shows a 3–4 σ deviation
between theory and experiment [1,2]. Ongoing experimental pro-
grams
at FERMILAB [3] and J-PARC [4]aim to reach a fourfold in-
crease
in precision in the direct measurement of a
μ
. This prospect
calls to reduce the theory uncertainty accordingly, which in turn
critically entails to reduce the error on the HLbL contribution by a
concerted theoretical and experimental effort. Experimentally, two-
photon
fusion reactions are studied at e
+
e
−
colliders. When both
leptons in the process e
+
e
−
→ e
+
e
−
X are detected in the final
state, this reaction allows to access the two-photon fusion process
γ
∗
γ
∗
→ X , where both photons have a spacelike virtuality. The
dominant HLbL contributions to a
μ
are coming from the produc-
tion
of the lightest pseudoscalar mesons X = π
0
, η, η
. The next
important contribution comes from pion pairs, which we consider
in this paper. The first measurement of the γγ
∗
→ π
0
π
0
process
has been reported recently by the Belle Collaboration [5]for Q
2
in
the region from 3.5–30 GeV
2
. At small momentum transfers, the
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail
address: danilkin@uni-mainz.de (I. Danilkin).
BESIII Collaboration is currently analyzing both π
+
π
−
and π
0
π
0
production in the 0.2GeV
2
Q
2
2GeV
2
range [6], correspond-
ing
with the most relevant kinematical region for quantifying the
HLbL contribution to a
μ
.
Very
close to threshold, the γγ → ππ process has been stud-
ied
in χ PT up to two-loop accuracy [7,8]as a tool to access pion
polarizabilities. Such approaches fail however to describe the res-
onance
region, which require resummation techniques to comply
with exact unitarity [9–13]. Among those, the most established
ones respect analyticity properties of the S-matrix [11–14]. The
energy range of applicability of such dispersive techniques is typi-
cally
limited by the inelastic contributions and inclusion of higher
partial waves. Extending such dispersive techniques to the par-
tial
wave helicity amplitudes of the single virtual γγ
∗
→ ππ
process is not straightforward, as in addition to the well-known
low-energy constraints, partial-wave amplitudes exhibit kinematic
constraints. Therefore, so far, the dispersive analyses of γγ
∗
→ ππ
have been limited to the s-wave and single-channel description
[15,16] which only covers the f
0
(500) resonance region. The aim
of this work is to extend the dispersive approach to the coupled-
channel
case by including K
¯
K intermediate states and to include
for the first time the d-wave contribution, which allows for a full
dispersive formalism through the prominent f
2
(1270) tensor me-
son
region. This will allow for a validation of such approach by
forthcoming BESIII data for the γγ
∗
→ ππ reaction, which is a
prerequisite for a data-driven approach in quantifying the uncer-
tainty
of the HLbL contribution to a
μ
.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2018.12.047
0370-2693/
© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by
SCOAP
3
.