Peripheral pn production and decay angular distributions in the reaction π−p → (pn)p at 12 GeV/c incident momentum

The reaction $\text{π}{}^{\mathrm{?}}\text{p}\text{→ (}\text{p}\text{n}\text{)}\text{p}{}_{\mathrm{s}}$, where p_s is a slow proton, was measured at 12 GeV/c incident momentum with the CERN-OMEGA spectrometer. Both antiproton and proton were identified uniquely by electronics information. We obtained 1844 events with four-momentum Transfer squared in the range 0.13 ? |t| ? 0.33 GeV² and with invariant masses $\text{M(}\text{p}\text{n}\text{)}$ up to 2.5 GeV. The corresponding cross section in this t range is determined to be σ = 4 ± 0.4 μb. Extrapolating the differential cross section over the whole t range assuming dσ/dt ≈ exp(5.3t) we estimate a cross section of σ = 9.3 ± 2.0 μb. Comparison with data on $\text{π}{}^{\mathrm{?}}\text{p}\text{→ (}\text{p}\text{p}\text{)}\text{n}{}_{\mathrm{s}}$ (where n_s is a slow neutron) in the same t range shows that the $\text{(}\text{p}\text{n}\text{)}\text{p}{}_{\mathrm{s}}\text{and}\text{(}\text{p}\text{p}\text{)}\text{n}{}_{\mathrm{s}}$ cross sections have approximately the same magnitude.