Production And Decay Properties Of The Omega-Pi-0-State At 1250 Mev/C2 Produced By 20-Gev Polarized Photons On Hydrogen

The low-mass \ensuremath{\omega}${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{0}$ enhancement in \ensuremath{\gamma}p\ensuremath{\rightarrow}p\ensuremath{\omega}${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{0}$ has been of considerable interest in the past due to its suggested vector nature and possible role in the spectroscopy of the \ensuremath{\rho}-meson radial recurrences. We have measured the properties of this photoproduced \ensuremath{\omega}${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{0}$ system using the SLAC Hybrid Facility. The experimental data consists of 306 785 usable hadronic events for which excellent \ensuremath{\gamma}-ray detection is provided by the large lead-glass array located behind the bubble-chamber. The photon beam had a 52% polarization. We have examined in detail the angular distributions of the 274 events from the reaction \ensuremath{\gamma}p\ensuremath{\rightarrow}p\ensuremath{\omega}${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{0}$. The angular distribution of the production plane relative to the polarization vector shows a structure inconsistent with an s-channel helicity-conserving process. We have extracted the moments of the decay angular distribution. Our data favors a B(1235) interpretation of the \ensuremath{\omega}${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{0}$ state over a vector-meson interpretation.