Abstract: The study of pion production in nuclei is important for signal and background determinations in current and future neutrino oscillation experiments. The first step, however, is to understand the pion production reactions at the free nucleon level. We present an exhaustive study of the charged-current and neutral-current neutrino and antineutrino pion production off nucleons, paying special attention to the angular distributions of the outgoing pion. We show, using general arguments, that parity violation and time-reversal odd correlations in the weak differential cross sections are generated from the interference between different contributions to the hadronic current that are not relatively real. Next, we present a detailed comparison of three state-of-the-art, microscopic models for electroweak pion production off nucleons, and we also confront their predictions with polarized electron data, as a test of the vector content of these models. We also illustrate the importance of carrying out a comprehensive test at the level of outgoing pion angular distributions, going beyond comparisons done for partially integrated cross sections, where model differences cancel to a certain extent. Finally, we observe that all charged and neutral current distributions show sizable anisotropies, and identify channels for which parity-violating effects are clearly visible. Based on the above results, we conclude that the use of isotropic distributions for the pions in the center of mass of the final pion-nucleon system, as assumed by some of the Monte Carlo event generators, needs to be improved by incorporating the findings of microscopic calculations.

Abstract: We have performed a combined analysis of the BESIII data for both the Z(c)(3900) and Z(cs)(3985) structures, assuming that the latter is an SU(3) flavor partner of the former one. We have improved on the previous analysis of Albaladejo et al. [Phys. Lett. B 755, 337 (2016)] by computing the amplitude for the D-1(D) over barD* triangle diagram considering both D- and S-wave D1D*x couplings. We have also investigated effects from SU(3) light-flavor violations, which are found to be moderate and of the order of 20%. The successful reproduction of the BESIII spectra, in both the hidden-charm and hidden-charm strange sectors, strongly supports that the Z(cs)(3985) and Z(c)(3900) are SU(3) flavor partners placed in the same octet multiplet. The best results are obtained when an energy-dependent term in the diagonal D(*) (D) over bar ((s))((*)) interaction is included, leading to resonances (poles above the thresholds) to describe these exotic states. We have also made predictions for the isovector Z*c and isodoublet Z*(cs), D*(D) over bar*, and D*??D*s molecules, with J(PC) = 1(+-) and J(P) = 1(+), respectively. These states would be heavy-quark spin symmetry (HQSS) partners of the Z(c) and Z(cs). Besides the determination of the masses and widths of the Z(c)(3900) and Z(cs)(3985), we also predict those of the Z*(c) and Z*(cs) resonances.

Abstract: The γp→K+Λ(1520) reaction mechanism is investigated within a Regge--effective Lagrangian hybrid approach based on our previous study of this reaction [Physical Review C89, 015203 (2014)]. Near threshold and for large K+ angles, both the CLAS and LEPS data can be successfully described by considering the contributions from the contact, t-channel K¯ exchange, u-channel Λ(1115) hyperon pole, and the s-channel nucleon pole and N∗(2120) resonance contributions. However, for higher energies and forward K+ angles, systematic discrepancies with data appear, which hint the possible existence of sizable quark-gluon string mechanism effects. We show how the inclusion of a K¯ Regge--trajectory exchange in the t-channel leads to an efficient description of the Λ(1520) photoproduction channel over the whole energy and angular ranges accessible in the CLAS experiment.