RHO-OMEGA OSCILLATION AND CHARGE-SYMMETRY BREAKING

We propose an oscillation mechanism for meson mixing that causes charg e symmetry breaking in nucleon-nucleon interactions. The mixing probab ilities of the rho meson component in the omega meson and vice versa a re estimated in a nuclear medium by using the data of the branching ra tio B(omega-->2 pi) and proton-proton (p-p) and neutron-neutron (n-n) scattering lengths. It is shown that the mixing probability depends on the nuclear density and is very small at normal density. In a nuclear medium, rho-omega mixing is larger in the p-p interaction than in the n-n interaction because of Coulomb repulsion.