Low Energy Experiments on pi-pi Scattering

Abstract

General interest in a precise determination of the threshold pi-pi amplitudes has recently increased markedly due to a controversy regarding the size of <0|qbar q|0>, the scalar quark condensate. This paper examines the current experimental information on the pi-pi scattering lengths, in particular the recent low energy pi N -> pi pi N data from several laboratories and the related application of the Chew-Low-Goebel technique well below 1 GeV/c momentum. It appears that uncertainties related to the treatment of non-pion-exchange backgrounds in these studies do not yet allow an unambiguous resolution of the <0|qbar q|0> size. However, near-term prospects for new model-independent results of improved precision are very good.

Talk given by D. Pocanic at Workshop on Chiral Dynamics: Theory and Experiment (ChPT 97), Mainz, Germany, 1-5 Sep 1997; 16 pages, 7 PostScript figures, writen in LaTeX, uses packages "lamuphys" and "epsfig". Author's e-mail: pocanic@virginia.edu