RHO production in proton-nucleus collision

With the final aim to explore the effect of the medium on hadron masses we study the reaction mechanism for the (p, p'rho(0)) reaction on nuclei. We f ocus on the amplitudes which are dominated by the N*(1720)P-13 resonance in intermediate state. This resonance has about 80% decay probability to Np c hannel. A nonrelativistic formalism is written for different amplitudes. Th e theoretical cross sections are presented for the C-12 target nucleus arou nd 3 GeV beam energy. These results are found to be sensitive to the N* as well as rho mass modifications in the medium. These two effects in the p' s pectrum can be separated experimentally as they are found to occur at diffe rent values of the p' momentum. Because of the exploratory nature of this i nvestigation, simple forms are used for the bound-state wave functions, and the continuum particles are approximated by plane waves.