Further evidence for formation of a narrow baryon resonance with positive strangeness in K + collisions with Xe nuclei

We have continued our investigation of the charge-exchange reaction K + Xe → K 0 p Xe’ in the bubble chamber DIANA. In agreement with our previous results based on part of the present statistics, formation of a narrow pK 0 resonance with mass of 1537 ± 2 MeV/ c 2 is observed in the elementary transition K + n → K 0 p on a neutron bound in the xenon nucleus. The visible width of the peak is consistent with being entirely due to instrumental resolution and allows one to place an upper limit on its intrinsic width: Γ < 9 MeV/ c 2 . A more precise estimate of the resonance intrinsic width, Γ = 0.36 ± 0.11 MeV/ c 2 , is obtained from the ratio between the numbers of resonant and nonresonant charge-exchange events. The signal is observed in a restricted interval of incident K + momentum that is consistent with smearing of a narrow pK 0 resonance by Fermi motion of the target neutron. The statistical significance of the signal is some 7.3, 5.3, and 4.3 standard deviations for the estimators S/√(B) ,S/√(S + B) and S/√(S + 2B) , respectively. This observation confirms and reinforces our earlier results, and offers strong evidence for formation of a pentaquark baryon with positive strangeness in the charge-exchange reaction K + n → K 0 p on a bound neutron.