ANALYSIS OF HIGH ENERGY K⁺K^- PHOTOPRODUCTION ON HYDROGEN

We have analyzed the γp→pK⁺K^- reaction in the K⁺K^- effective mass region around the mass of the ϕ(1020) meson. The interference of the S-wave contribution with the P-wave has been studied. Both scalar resonances f₀(980) and a₀(980) have been taken into account. We obtained a good description of the available experimental data, in particular the mass distributions and the moments of the kaon angular distribution. Our calculations give values of the integrated S-wave total photoproduction cross section between 4 and 7 nb for the K⁺K^- effective mass range around the ϕ(1020) mass and at the laboratory photon energy near 5 GeV. These numbers favor lower experimental estimates obtained at DESY.