Heavy meson production in proton-nucleus reactions with empirical spectral functions

We study the production of K+, ρ, ω and φ mesons in p+12C reactions on the basis of empirical spectral functions. The high momentum, high removal energy part of the spectral function is found to be negligible in all cases close to the absolute threshold. Furthermore, the two-step process (pN→πNN; πN→NπK+, ρ, ω, φ) dominates the cross section at threshold energies in line with earlier calculations based on the folding model. (orig.). With 15 figs., 3 tabs