Elastic and inelastic φ photoproduction

The differential cross section of the reaction (γp → pφ) has been measured in the t range 0 ? t ? 0.4 GeV² and for photon energies from 3.0 to 6.7 GeV. In particular for the small t region the measurement accuracy was better than 10%. We obtained for the slope parameter B in an exponential parametrization of the differential cross section dσ/dt = Ae^?Bt values of $\text{B ? 6 ± 0.5}\text{GeV}{}^{\mathrm{?2}}$ which are significantly larger than the slopes obtained by most other experiments at higher t values. This indicates a t dependence of B particularly in the small t region.An energy dependence of the optical point (dσ/dt)_t=0, observed in our measurements, has been explained as a kinematic effect due to the VDM relation. A fit of our measurements is in excellent agreement with all other published values of (dσ/dt)_t=0(γp → φp), this implies that σ_tot(φp) must be essentially energy independent in this energy range.Spin density matrix elements of the φ have been evaluated and an analysis of the helicity amplitudes has been carried out. This analysis confirmed s-channel helicity conservation. Moments of spherical harmonics of the $\text{K}\text{K}$ angular decay distribution have been computed for 10 MeV $\text{K}\text{K}$ mass-bins from threshold to 1.3 GeV. The mass dependence of the normalized moments is generally smooth. Contributing amplitudes have essentially only even moments. The moment 〈Y₂⁰〉/〈Y₀⁰〉 changes sign above the φ mass.Differential cross sections for the inelastic φ production γp → φX have been evaluated for the first time both with respect to t?t_min and M_K. The integrated inelastic cross sections are comparable in size with the elastic ones. The slopes of the differential cross sections dσ/dt appear to become flatter with increasing M_X.