D waves in neutral pion photoproduction in the near threshold region
Cesar Fernandez-Ramirez (ECT*, Trento)

It has been commonly assumed that low-energy neutral pion photoproduction from the proton can be described accounting only for S and P waves, and that higher partial waves are irrelevant. We have found that this assumption is not correct and that the inclusion of D waves is necessary to obtain a reliable extraction of the \(E_{0+}\) multipole from experimental data.
This is due in large measure to the spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry in QCD which leads to very small S-wave contributions. This makes the usual partial wave expansion less accurate and although D waves are small, their contribution is enhanced through the interference with P waves, which compromises the S-wave extraction from data if D waves are not taken into account.