Two-pion production in nucleon–nucleon collisions—Back to dibaryons?

The two-pion production in nucleon–nucleon collisions has been investigated systematically by exclusive and kinematically complete measurements at CELSIUS/WASA and more recently at COSY-TOF and particularly WASA@COSY. The data for all p p -induced isovector production channels in the energy range from threshold up to T p = 1.4 GeV can be well understood by t -channel Roper, Δ Δ and possibly Δ ( 1600 ) excitation. In contrast to that the purely isoscalar reaction channel p n → d π 0 π 0 exhibits a narrow resonance-like structure with m = 2.37 GeV and Γ = 70 MeV in the total cross section, which is correlated with an intriguing low-mass enhancement in the π π invariant mass spectrum (ABC effect) as well as with the formation of a Δ Δ system in the intermediate state. From the angular distributions the spin and parity of this structure have been derived resulting in I ( J P ) = 0 ( 3 + ) . The consequences of the resonance hypothesis for other reaction channels are discussed. The fact that also the double-pionic fusion reactions to 3He and 4He exhibit a corresponding resonance-like structure in the total cross section correlated with the ABC effect suggests that the underlying conjectured p n resonance is obviously robust enough to survive in nuclei.