Exclusive production of pi+ pi- pairs in proton-proton and proton-antiproton collisions

Abstract

We report on a detailed investigation of four-body $p p \to p p \pi^+ \pi^-$ and $p \bar{p} \to p \bar{p} \pi^+ \pi^-$) reactions which constitute an irreducible background to three-body processes $p p \to p p M$, where $M$ is a broad resonance in the $\pi^+ \pi^-$ channel, e.g. $M=\sigma, \rho^{0}, f_{0}(980), f_{2}(1275), f_{0}(1500)$. We include double-diffractive contribution (both pomeron and reggeon exchanges) as well as the pion-pion rescattering contributions. The first process dominates at higher energies and small pion-pion invariant masses while the second becomes important at lower energies and higher pion-pion invariant masses. We compare our results with the experimental data. We make predictions for future experiments at PANDA, RHIC, Tevatron and LHC energies. The two-dimensional distribution in rapidity space of pions $(y_{\pi^+}, y_{\pi^-})$ is particularly interesting. The higher the incident energy, the higher preference for the same-hemisphere emission of pions. The processes considered constitute a sizeable contribution to the total nucleon-nucleon cross section as well as to pion inclusive cross section.