Study of the reaction pp to pp pi^0 within 10 MeV above the threshold

Kinematically complete measurements of the reaction were performed for beam energies in the range 292-298 MeV. We detected both protons in coincidence by using the large-acceptance COSY-TOF spectrometer and an external proton beam at COSY-JÃ&frac;lich; thus, we measured total and differential cross-sections and energy distributions. A strong enhancement was observed in the Dalitz plots due to the final-state interaction between the two outgoing protons; the data are well reproduced by Monte Carlo simulations using a standard scattering length of a₀=-7.83 fm and effective range of r₀=2.8 fm. Our measured total cross-sections are roughly larger than those of recent internal-target experiments at IUCF and CELSIUS. This discrepancy may be due to the final-state interaction pushing some events into the very small-angle region which is almost inaccessible to an internal-target experiment. In the angular distributions we found only very slight deviations from isotropy. The analysis of our momentum distributions yielded a small fraction of for Ps or Pp wave contributions.PACS:  13.75.Cs Nucleon-nucleon interactions (including antinucleons, deuterons, etc.) - 25.10.+s Nuclear reactions involving few-nucleon systems - 25.40.Ep Inelastic proton scattering - 29.20.Dh Storage rings