Near-threshold photoproduction of ϕ mesons from deuterium

Abstract We report the first, kinematically-complete measurement of the differential cross section of ϕ -meson photoproduction from deuterium near the production threshold for a proton using the CLAS detector and a tagged-photon beam in Hall B at Jefferson Lab. The measurement was carried out by a triple coincidence detection of a proton, K + and K − near the theoretical production threshold of 1.57 GeV. The extracted differential cross sections d σ d t for the initial photon energy range of 1.65–1.75 GeV are consistent with predictions based on a quasifree mechanism. Our finding is different from recent LEPS results on ϕ -meson photoproduction from deuterium in a similar incident photon energy range, but in a different momentum transfer region.