Theory of kaonic hydrogen

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
We have investigated different forms of the Klein-Gordon equation using phenomenological potentials and attempted to fit the measured strong interaction shifts and widths of kaonic hydrogen and all the heavier kaonic atoms, as well as the scattering lengths obtained from the analysis of low energy K¯N scattering data. We find that we can fit all the data except kaonic hydrogen with various forms of the equation, but in order to fit kaonic hydrogen at the same time it is crucial to have a vector strong interaction term and include the interference between this and the Coulomb force. Our results explain the discrepancy in the sign of the strong interaction shift, which has been a puzzle for many years.