Photoproduction and Forbidden Decays ofϕMesons

Photoproduction of φ mesons from hydrogen and carbon was studied at 5.2 GeV by observing φ→K⁺K^- decays. The results show that φ's are produced diffractively with a φ-nucleon cross section σ_φN=9.8_-3.3+2.9 mb. In addition, 80 000 pion pairs were measured to search for the G-parity-nonconserving decay φ→π⁺π^-. Assuming complete interference between ρ→π⁺π^- and φ→π⁺π^-, we found an upper limit of ${{{Γ}}_{{φ}{→}2{π}}}{{{Γ}}_{{φ}{→}all}}=2.7×{}{10}^{{-}4}$ at the 95% level.