Study of pion-induced phi-meson production on the proton at incident pion momenta below 2.4 GeV/c

Ishikawa, Takatsugu*; Hosaka, Atsushi; Gubler, P. ; Sako, Hiroyuki   ; Tanida, Kiyoshi   ; 33 of others*

We plan to measure cross sections for pion-induced phi-meson production on the proton at the high-intensity high-momentum secondary-particle beamline at J-PARC under the E95 physics program to study nucleon resonances and a possible hidden-strangeness pentaquark baryon in the phi-nucleon channel, which are expected to appear in the s-channel intermediate state of the reaction. The pentaquark baryon is a candidate for the origin of the unresolved bump that observed in the differential cross section at forward angles for photoproduction of phi mesons on the proton. We use several incident negative-pion momenta ranging from 1.6 to 2.4 GeV/c and detect positive and negative kaon pairs from the phi-meson decays utilizing the existing spectrometer with large acceptance. In this contribution, we will give a brief introduction of this E95 physics program.