OPT-IN: Differential cross sections and polarization observables from the CLAS Kâ photoproduction and search for new Nâ states

[Reinhard Schumacher]

Hi Ken et al.

I did a read-through of your draft paper of K* photoproduction.  I have a
few comments and suggestions about the text.  Unfortunately you did
not include line numbering in the draft.

Section 2.:  Start with "The experiment USED the CEBAF..."

Figure 2:  There are some pretty wild non-statistical deviations in
some of the panels.   What are they?  The top right panel looks pretty
ratty and ought to be explained.   Also, what is the background?   It
varies from bin to bin in a rather unsystematic way.   It suggests
that the background is not under control.   Can you say something to
reassure the reader that you don't have an uncontrolled large-ish
background?

Also, related to Figure 2, the text say you fitted it with a
Voigtian, and it seems that you let both sigma and Gamma be free
parameters.  Given that you also have a seemingly uncontrolled
background, and given that several of the fits look quite poor, the
reader does not get a good feeling about the yield extraction.   Can
you address these issues in the text?

Page 3: Equation (3) at the top needs a reference.

Page 3: above Eq 4: "event-by-event".

Eq (4):  How do you compute the error bars you show given that you are
using this method?  You don't automatically get "1-sigma" errors with
this method.

Figure 3... is a orphan, not mentioned in the text.  

Figs 3, 4, 5: Figure captions have bad English:  "The fits were
restricted to invariant masses BELOW 2.6 GeV, making curves at higher
energies predictions."  When I read the captions before reading the
paper I could not parse what the meaning was.  

Good luck with the next steps.

Reinhard