Spin effects and baryon resonance dynamics in φ-meson photoproduction at few GeV -: art. no. 065205

The diffractive phi-meson photoproduction amplitude is dominated by the Pomeron-exchange process and contains the terms that govern the spin-spin and spin-orbital interactions. We show that these terms are responsible for the spin-flip transitions at forward photoproduction angles and appear in the angular distributions of phi-->K+K- decay in reactions with unpolarized and polarized photon beams. At large momentum transfers, the main contribution to the phi-meson photoproduction is found to be due to the excitation of nucleon resonances. Combined analysis of omega and phi photoproduction indicates strong Okubo-Zweig-Iizuka-rule violation in phiNN* couplings. We also show that the spin observables are sensitive to the dynamics of phi-meson photoproduction at large angles and could help to distinguish different theoretical models of nucleon resonances. Predictions for spin effects in phi-meson photoproduction are presented for future experimental tests.