The electromagnetic form factors of Λ hyperon in e+ e− → Λ̄Λ

Yongliang Yang1 and Zhun Lu1, ∗

1
School of Physics, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
We study the electromagnetic form factors of Λ hyperon in the timelike region using the recent
experimental data in the exclusive production of Λ̄Λ pair in electron-position annihilation. We
present a pQCD inspired parametrization of GE (s) and GM (s) with only two parameters, and we
consider a suppression mechanism of the electric form factor GE (s) compared to the magnetic form
factor GM (s). The parameters are determined through fitting our parametrization to the effective
form factor data in the reaction e+ e− → Λ̄Λ. Except the threshold region, our parametrization
can reproduce satisfactorily the known behavior of the existing data from the BaBar, DM2 and
BESIII Collaborations. We also predict the double spin polarization observables Axx , Ayy and Azz
arXiv:1712.06459v1 [hep-ph] 18 Dec 2017

in e+ e− → Λ̄Λ.

PACS numbers: 13.40.Gp,13.66.Bc,14.20.Jn

I. INTRODUCTION

The electromagnetic form factors (EMFFs) of hadrons are important quantities for probing the fundamental in-
formation of the hadron structure and understanding the strong interaction in the perturbative and nonperturbative
region. The investigations on the proton and neutron form factors have been performed extensively in both the
spacelike and timelike regions, i.e. in the ep elastic scattering, p̄p annihilation and e+ e− annihilation processes. Par-
ticularly, the Born cross section of nucleon pair production and the corresponding nucleon effective form factor were
studied theoretically and experimentally over the last two decades [1–17].
In recent years, there is also an increasing interest on the EMFFs of another baryon, i.e. the Λ hyperon. In contrast
to nucleons, it is rather difficult to explore the cross section and the EMFFs of the Λ hyperon [2, 18–20]. This is
because hyperons are unstable and hyperon targets are unfeasible, in principle the EMFFs of hyperons in the spacelike
cannot be measured by exclusive experiments. Therefore, the timelike form factors can offer a unique opportunity to
study the electromagnetic property of hyperons. The importance of studying hyperon structure and measuring the
timelike form factors of the Λ hyperon was first indicated by Cabibbo and Gatto [21]. The BaBar [20] and DM2 [2]
Collaboration experiments measured the Born cross section and effective form factor of the process e+ e− → Λ̄Λ,
with significantly lager uncertainties compared to the proton case. Very recently, BESIII [18] Collaboration also
provide new measurement on this process, and the result is found to be consistent with the previous measurement
with improved precision, particularly in the near threshold region. Theoretically, the near threshold behaviour of the
baryon pair production has been investigated by several theoretical works [22–26]. The EMFFs of the Λ hyperon in
the timelike region have been analyzed by several theoretical studies [22, 26–30]. Particularly, the first attempt to
calculate the Λ hyperon EMFFs GE√ and GM up to the Σ̄+ Σ+ threshold was reported in Ref. [22]. Furthermore, at
large center-of-mass (c.m.) energy s, perturbative QCD predicts the existence of final interactions in the reaction
e+ e− → B̄B, since the hadrons are initially produced with small color dipole moment [8]. These studies on the
existing data and the future plans of precise measurements of the exclusive production of Λ hyperons provide useful
constraints on the Λ electromagnetic form factor in the timelike region.
In this work, we suggest a parametrization on the lambda EMFFs with only two parameters to √ describe the existing
data of the lambda EMFFs as well as the Born cross section of the reaction e+ e− → Λ̄Λ, up to s = 3.08 GeV. The
parameterized form is based on the quark counting rules within pQCD and a suppression mechanism of the electric
form factor [6]. Similarly to the nucleon, we take an assumption that the magnetic form factor GM of the Λ hyperon
is dominant for the contribution in e+ e− → Λ̄Λ [11]. The parametrization provides a good description for the cross
section of√e+ e− → Λ̄Λ and the corresponding EMFFs data from the DM2, BaBar and BESIII experiments in a wide
range of s, except the region near the Λ̄Λ threshold. In Addition, we predict spin polarized observables in Λ pair
production which are related to the moduli of GE and GM .

∗ Electronic address: zhunlu@seu.edu.cn

 2

II. BASIC FORMALISM FOR e+ e− → Λ̄Λ

The general expression of the Born cross section for the reaction e+ e− → B̄B has been given in Ref. [15], where B
is a spin-1/2 baryon. Under the one-photon exchange approximation, the angular dependent differential cross section
of the lambda pair production is governed by the electric and magnetic form factors GE and GM as follows
α2 βC
 
dσ(s) 1
= |GM (s)|2 (1 + cos2 θ) + |GE (s)| sin2 θ , (1)
dΩ 4s 2τ
with τ = s/4M 2 , where M = 1.116 GeV is the lambda mass. Here, α ≈ 1/137 is the electromagnetic fine-structure
constant, θ is the scattering angle in the c.m. frame, s = q 2 is the square of the c.m. energy. The variable β = kkΛe
is a phase-space factor, with kΛ and ke the of the three-vector momenta of the lambda and thepelectron in the c.m.
frame [22], respectively. In the differential cross section, we can obtain the phase factor β = 1 − 1/τ by setting
the lepton mass to zero. The Coulomb enhancement factor C [30, 31], accounting for the electromagnetic interaction
of the point-like baryon pairs in the final state, is equal to one for neutral baryon pair and y/(1 − e−y ) for charged
baryon pair [32] with y = πα(1 + β 2 )/β .
The total cross section thus can be expressed in terms of GM/E
4πα2 β
 
1
σ(s) = |GM (s)|2 + |GE (s)| . (2)
3s 2τ
Another quantity used in various analyses is the so-called the effective form factor Geff (s). The effective form factor
is equivalent to |GM | under the working hypothesis GE = GM [11]. In more general cases, the effective form factor
is relevant to the combination of the moduli of the EMFFs [9]
r
2τ |GM (s)|2 + |GE (s)|2
|Geff (s)| = , (3)
1 + 2τ
it is proportional to the square root of the Born cross section via
s
σe+ e− →Λ̄Λ (s)
|Geff (s)| = 4πα2 β 1
, (4)
3s C[1 + 2τ ]

which can be deduced from the experimental measurements. In Ref. [22], a variety of ΛΛ̄ potential models [33, 34] is
employed to estimate the effective form factor, as well as the electromagnetic form factors GM (s) and GE (s), with s
up to the Σ̄+ Σ+ threshold.

III. THE PARAMETRIZATION AND FITTING PROCEDURE IN THE TIMELIKE REGION

The investigation of the EMFFs in the time like region can be accessed from the EMFFs in the spacelike region
via the crossing symmetry between the electron-nucleon elastic scattering and the annihilation processes [12]. For
electron-nucleon elastic scattering, the reaction process of γ ∗ + 3q → 3q in pQCD is described by the Feynman
diagram illustrated in Ref. [35], where the virtual photon interacts with the proton leaving the proton unchanged
after transferring the momentum to each of the quarks, through the gluon exchange [36, 37]. Based on the quark
1−nh
counting rules, pQCD predicts [35] that the nucleon EMFFs behave as GE(M) ∼ (−q 2 ) at large momentum
transfer, where nh is the number of the valance quarks in the baryons [35, 38], and nh − 1 is the number of the
exchanged gluons between the quarks. Hence the nucleon EMFFs in the spacelike region must contain terms with, at
least, two gluon propagators that entail the power law behavior as
 2
1
|GM | ∼ , (5)
−q 2
where q is the transferred momentum in the process.
Based on the pQCD predictions and counting rules [11], we present a parametrization for the lambda |GM | and
|GE | in the timelike region as follows
AΛ
|GM (s)| = 2 , (6)
τ 2+δΛ ln (s/Λ2QCD )
|GE (s)| = τ −1 |GM (s)| , (7)
 3

0.8 400

(pb)
0.6
|Geff|

0.4 200

0.2

0.0 0
2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0

s (GeV) s (GeV)

FIG.
√ 1: Left panel: our fit to the world data on the lambda |Geff |. Right panel: the model resulting Born cross section σ vs.
s compared with data. The rectangles, triangles and circles represent the data from the BaBar [20], DM2 [2] and BESIII [18]
Collaborations, respectively. The vertical lines represent the Λ̄Λ threshold.

where ΛQCD = 0.3 GeV [11] is the QCD scale parameter, AΛ and δΛ are the two free parameters which can be
obtained by fitting the experimental data. The variable τ is introduced in Eq. (6) to make AΛ dimensionless. The
factor ln(s/Λ2QCD ) represents the logarithmic corrections from QCD. As shown in Refs. [8, 11, 39–41] logarithmic
corrections enable a good fit to the data.
The main difference between our parametrization for Lambda EMFFs and the one for the nucleon EMFFs in
spacelike region [11] is their power law behavior. In the case of the nucleon EMFFs, the power of 1/(−q 2 ) is 2,
representing the minimal number of the exchanged gluons [11, 35]. In our case we introduce the parameter δΛ
accounting the difference between the Λ hyperon and the nucleons as well as the difference between the timelike and
spacelike region, that is, here 2+δΛ gives the averaged number of the exchanged gluons for the Λ̄Λ production, beyond
the minimal gluon exchange. Secondly, 4M 2 /s in Eq. (7) severs as an additional suppression factor for GE compared
to GM , due to the screening of electric charge in a neutral plasma [6]. The similar suppression effect was already
considered in the study of the nucleon EMFFS [6]. Finally, our parameterization is consistent to the normalization
condition |GE (4MΛ2 )/GM (4MΛ2 )| = 1 at the kinematical threshold.
The Born cross section for the√reaction e+ e− → Λ̄ Λ√has been measured by BaBar [20], DM2 [2] and BESIII [18, 42],
covering the mass region from s = 2.2324 GeV to s = 3.08 GeV . We fit the data of the lambda effective form
factor |Geff | by using the parameterization in Eqs. (6) and (7). The best fitted values of the parameters are

AΛ = 3.781, δΛ = 1.362. (8)

In the left panel of Fig. 1, the comparison between our fitting and the experimental measurement on Geff is depicted.
In the right panel of Fig. 1, we plot the estimated Born cross section in reaction e+ e− → Λ̄Λ together with the
BaBar [20], DM2 [2] and BESIII data. We find that except the near-threshold region, our parametrization can
well describe the data of Geff as well as the cross section. The underestimate of our model in the threshold region
is understandable since our model is based on the perturbative QCD. The unusual threshold behaviour implies a
more complicated underlying physics scenario other than perturbative QCD. Interpretations on the near threshold
enhancement of the cross section were suggested in Ref. [22, 30].
In the left panel of Fig. 2, we plot the moduli of the lambda GE (solid line) and GM (dashed line), respectively. Due
to our parametrization in Eq. (7), the electric form factor is smaller than GM in the region s > 4M 2 . Although at
present there is no individual experimental measurements on GE and GM , the ratio of these two quantities, |GE /GM |,
has been measured by the BaBar Collaboration [20] in two mass intervals: from Λ̄Λ threshold to 2.4 GeV and from
2.4 GeV to 2.8 GeV. We plot the model result of the ratio |GE /GM | in the right panel of Fig. 2. We find our result
is in agreement with the data of BaBar at the high mass interval. The ratio |GE /GM | is found to be greater than 1
near-threshold in the measurement, which may be explained by the final state interaction between the baryon pairs
[22, 43, 44].
The lambda EMFFs can be used to predict the spin polarized observables Aij [27, 28] appearing in the reaction
e+ e− → Λ̄Λ, which depend not only on the moduli of the EMFFs, but also on the relative phase between GE and
GM . Those observables have not been measured in experiments yet. As our parametrization cannot separate the
real and imaginary parts of the EMFFs, we only calculate the three diagonal components of the spin polarization
 4

0.30 3

0.25 BaBar
G
E

G
M
0.20 2

|G /G |
M
0.15

E
0.10 1

0.05

0.00 0
2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8

s (GeV) s (GeV)

FIG. 2: Left panel: the the electric

√ form factor |GE | (solid line) and the magnetic form factor |GM | (dashed line) of the lambda
in our model, as functions of s. Right panel: the ratio |GE /GM | of the lambda. Data are from the BaBar Collaboration [20].

1.0 0.0 1.0

0.9
0.8 -0.1

0.8

0.6 -0.2
0.7
xx

yy

zz
A

A
0.4 -0.3 0.6

0.5
0.2 -0.4

0.4
0.0 -0.5
-1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0

cos( ) cos( ) cos( )

√
FIG. 3: The predictions of the double spin polarization observables vs. cos(θ) in the reaction e+ e− → Λ̄Λ at the energy s=
2.6 GeV. We calculate these observables in a coordinate system following Ref. [28].

observables [28]:

[Dc − Ds ] sin2 (θ)

Axx = , (9)
Dc − Ds sin2 (θ)
−Ds sin2 (θ)
Ayy = , (10)
Dc − Ds sin2 (θ)
[Ds sin2 (θ) + Dc cos2 (θ)]
Azz = , (11)
Dc − Ds sin2 (θ)

where θ is the scattering angle defined in the previous section, Dc = 2s|GM |2 and Ds = s|GM |2 − 4M 2 |GE |2 . In our
estimate these polarization observables are calculated in √the orthonormalized coordinates system [28]. In Fig. 3, we
plot our prediction on Axx , Ayy and Azz at the energy s = 2.6 GeV, where the ratio |GE /G √M | from our model
agrees with the BaBar data. We find that in our model Axx and Azz are positive in the region s = 2.6 GeV, while
Ayy is negative in the same region. The angular dependence of Axx is different from those of Ayy and Azz . As the
polarization observables are sensitive to the model assumption of the form factors, precise measurements of these
quantities would provide a way to test the validity of the EMFFs in different models.

IV. CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, we have generalized the parameterization of the nucleon EMFFs |GE | and |GM | to the case of the
Λ hyperon with only two parameters. A power law behavior s2+δΛ for the EMFFs in the timelike region has been
introduced following the quark counting rule inspired by pQCD, with δΛ representing the difference between the
lambda form factors and the nucleon form factors. The fit was performed on the existing form factor data from the
BaBar, DM2 and BESIII experiments. The fitted values of the parameters in Eq. (6) are AΛ = 3.781 and δΛ = 1.362,
respectively. The resulting parameters are applied to calculate the Born cross sections in the reaction e+ e− → Λ̄Λ as
 5
√
well as the ratio |GE /GM |. Except the threshold
√ region s = 2.2324 GeV, our parametrization results are in good
agreement with experimental data in a wide s region.
√ At last, we have presented our prediction on the diagonal
spin polarization observables Axx , Ayy and Azz at s = 2.6 GeV. We expect future precise measurement on the cross
section and the spin polarized observables in e+ e− → Λ̄Λ will shed more light on the size of the lambda EMFFs as
well as their phase angles.

V. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work is partially supported by the NSFC (China) grant 11575043, and by the Fundamental Research Funds
for the Central Universities of China. Y. Y. is supported by the Scientific Research Foundation of Graduate School
of Southeast University (Grant No. YBJJ1770) and the Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of
Jiangsu Province (Grants No. KYCX17 0043).

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