[Clascomment] OPT-IN:Absorption of the omega and phi Mesons in Nuclei

[Mikhail Osipenko]

Dear Authors,

the results you are presenting in the paper are interesting, but the quality of the paper is still not as good, at least for the \"general\" reader of PRL... Here are my suggestions:

1) page 2, column 1, paragraph 1 - the paragraph explains general features, while the last sentence is, probably, applicable to your particular experiment. Please remove it.

2) you never define the \"width\" - is it decay width? And the same for the \"density\" - I can only guess that you mean the nucleon density.

3) page 2, column 2, paragraph 2 - whole paragraph does not fit the place, I cannot connect it neither with previous nor with the following. Could you move it in the middle of the previous paragraph where you introduce the \"in-medium width\"? While the part related to, irrelevant to the present paper, concepts like \"the number of sub-threshold channels, meson mass\" can be separated in a new paragraph.

4) page 4, column 2, paragraph 2 - the statement about \"the nucleon resonance coupling to phi-N\" needs at least a reference or some justification. Did you deduce this from your data?

5) Fig.4 - you claim that even at momentum 1.7 GeV/c TAPS data disagree with yours, but you never quantify this statement. Could you add this TAPS point in Fig.4 e.g. like a green triangle, then the reader will be able to appreciate your statement from the figure directly.

6) as the conclusion of the paper and from Fig.3 you claim that the width of omega is >200 MeV, but is it compatible with Fig.1? Could you put the lower limit on the extracted width, for example 300 MeV, and superimpose on Fig.1 a Breit-Wigner of such width. I suspect that it will be incompatible with Fe-Ti data. Did I misunderstand something?

Good Luck,
              Mikhail.