Few-Body Aspects of the Near Threshold Pseudoscalar Meson Production

During the last decade large samples of data have been collected on the production of the ground-state pseudoscalar mesons in collisions of proton or deuteron beam with hydrogen or deuterium target. These measurements have been performed in the vicinity of the kinematical threshold for meson production where only a few partial waves in both initial and final state are expected to contribute to the production process. This simplifies significantly the interpretation of the data, yet still appears to be challenging due to the three or four particle final state systems with a complex hadronic potential. We review experiments and phenomenology of the near threshold production of the ground-state mesons in the few-body final states as for example: nucleus-meson and nucleon-nucleon-meson, and report on the status of the search of the mesic-nuclei (a meson-nucleus bound states). Experimental advantages of measurements close to the kinematical threshold are discussed, and general features of the production mechanism of the η and η′ mesons in the nucleon-nucleon collisions are presented emphasising results of measurements of spin and isospin dependence of the production cross sections.