Photoproduction of the f2 (1270) meson using the CLAS detector

The quark structure of the f(2)(1270) meson has, for many years, been assumed to be a pure quark-antiquark (q (q) over bar) resonance with quantum numbers J(PC) = 2(++). Recently, it was proposed that the f(2)(1270) is a molecular state made from the attractive interaction of two rho mesons. Such a state would be expected to decay strongly to final states with charged pions due to the dominant decay rho -> pi(+)pi(-), whereas decay to two neutral pions would likely be suppressed. Here, we measure for the first time the reaction gamma p -> pi(0)pi(0)p, using the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer detector at Jefferson Lab for incident beam energies between 3.6 and 5.4 GeV. Differential cross sections, d sigma/dt, for f(2)(1270) photoproduction are extracted with good precision due to low backgrounds and are compared to theoretical calculations.