Unexpected impact of D waves in low-energy neutral pion photoproduction from the proton and the extraction of multipoles

Abstract

Contributions of D waves to physical observables for neutral pion photoproduction from the proton in the near-threshold region are studied and means to isolate them are proposed. Various approaches to describe the multipoles are employed-a phenomenological one, a unitary one, and heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory. The results of these approaches are compared and found to yield essentially the same answers. D waves are seen to enter together with S waves in a way that any means which attempt to obtain the E0+ multipole accurately must rely on knowledge of D waves and that consequently the latter cannot be dismissed in analyses of low-energy pion photoproduction. It is shown that D waves have a significant impact on double-polarization observables that can be measured. This importance of D waves is due to the soft nature of the S wave and is a direct consequence of chiral symmetry and the Nambu-Goldstone nature of the pion. F-wave contributions are shown to be negligible in the near-threshold region.