No Arabic abstract
Precise proton and neutron form factor measurements at Jefferson Lab, using spin observables, have recently made a significant contribution to the unraveling of the internal structure of the nucleon. Accurate experimental measurements of the nucleon form factors are a test-bed for understanding how the nucleons static properties and dynamical behavior emerge from QCD, the theory of the strong interactions between quarks. There has been enormous theoretical progress, since the publication of the Jefferson Lab proton form factor ratio data, aiming at reevaluating the picture of the nucleon. We will review the experimental and theoretical developments in this field and discuss the outlook for the future.
The u- and d-quark contributions to the elastic nucleon electromagnetic form factors have been determined using experimental data on GEn, GMn, GpE, and GpM. Such a flavor separation of the form factors became possible up to 3.4 GeV2 with recent data on GEn from Hall A at JLab. At a negative four-momentum transfer squared Q2 above 1 GeV2, for both the u- and d-quark components, the ratio of the Pauli form factor to the Dirac form factor, F2/F1, was found to be almost constant, and for each of F2 and F1 individually, the d-quark portions of both form factors drop continuously with increasing Q2.
The spatial distribution of charge and magnetization within the proton is encoded in the elastic form factors. These have been precisely measured in elastic electron scattering, and the combination of proton and neutron form factors allows for the separation of the up- and down-quark contributions. In this work, we extract the proton and neutron form factors from worlds data with an emphasis on precise new data covering the low-momentum region, which is sensitive to the large-scale structure of the nucleon. From these, we separate the up- and down-quark contributions to the proton form factors. We combine cross section and polarization measurements of elastic electron-proton scattering to separate the proton form factors and two-photon exchange (TPE) contributions. We combine the proton form factors with parameterization of the neutron form factor data and uncertainties to separate the up- and down-quark contributions to the protons charge and magnetic form factors. The extracted TPE corrections are compared to previous phenomenological extractions, TPE calculations, and direct measurements from the comparison of electron and positron scattering. The flavor-separated form factors are extracted and compared to models of the nucleon structure. With the inclusion of the precise new data, the extracted TPE contributions show a clear change ofsign at low $Q^2$, necessary to explain the high-$Q^2$ form factor discrepancy while being consistent with the known $Q^2 to 0$ limit. We find that the new Mainz data yield a significantly different result for the proton magnetic form factor and its flavor-separated contributions. We also observe that the RMS radius of both the up- and down-quark distributions are smaller than the RMS charge radius of the proton.
We compute nucleon and Roper e.m. elastic and transition form factors using a symmetry-preserving treatment of a contact-interaction. Obtained thereby, the e.m. interactions of baryons are typically described by hard form factors. In contrasting this behaviour with that produced by a momentum-dependent interaction, one achieves comparisons which highlight that elastic scattering and resonance electroproduction experiments probe the infrared evolution of QCDs running masses; e.g., the existence, and location if so, of a zero in the ratio of nucleon Sachs form factors are strongly influenced by the running of the dressed-quark mass. In our description of baryons, diquark correlations are important. These correlations are instrumental in producing a zero in the Dirac form factor of the protons d-quark; and in determining d_v/u_v(x=1), as we show via a formula that expresses d_v/u_v(x=1) in terms of the nucleons diquark content. The contact interaction produces a first excitation of the nucleon that is constituted predominantly from axial-vector diquark correlations. This impacts greatly on the gamma*p->P_{11}(1440) form factors. Notably, our quark core contribution to F_2*(Q^2) exhibits a zero at Q^2~0.5mN^2. Faddeev equation treatments of a hadrons quark core usually underestimate its magnetic properties, hence we consider the effect produced by a dressed-quark anomalous e.m. moment. Its inclusion much improves agreement with experiment. On the domain 0<Q^2<2GeV^2, meson-cloud effects are important in making a realistic comparison between experiment and hadron structure calculations. Our computed helicity amplitudes are similar to the bare amplitudes in coupled-channels analyses of the electroproduction process. Thus supports a view that extant structure calculations should directly be compared with the bare-couplings, etc., determined via coupled-channels analyses.
We study the electromagnetic structure of the nucleon within a hybrid constituent-quark model that comprises, in addition to the $3q$ valence component, also a $3q$+$pi$ non-valence component. To this aim we employ a Poincare-invariant multichannel formulation based on the point-form of relativistic quantum mechanics. With a simple 3-quark wave function for the bare nucleon, i.e. the $3q$-component, we obtain reasonable results for the nucleon form factors and predict the meson-cloud contribution to be significant only below $Q^2lesssim 0.5$,GeV$^2$ amounting to about 10% for $Q^2rightarrow 0$, in accordance with the findings of other authors.
The roles played by mesons in the electromagnetic form factors of the nucleon are explored using as a basis a model containing vector mesons with coupling to the continuum together with the asymptotic $Q^2$ behavior of perturbative QCD. Specifically, the vector dominance model (GKex) developed by Lomon is employed, as it is known to be very successful in representing the existing high-quality data published to date. An analysis is made of the experimental uncertainties present when the differences between the GKex model and the data are expanded in orthonormal basis functions. A main motivation for the present study is to provide insight into how the various ingredients in this model yield the measured behavior, including discussions of when dipole form factors are to be expected or not, of which mesons are the major contributors, for instance, at low-$Q^2$ or large distances, and of what effects are predicted from coupling to the continuum. Such insights are first discussed in momentum space, followed by an analysis of how different and potentially useful information emerges when both the experimental and theoretical electric form factors are Fourier transformed to coordinate space. While these Fourier transforms should not be interpreted as charge distributions, nevertheless the roles played by the various mesons, especially which are dominant at large or small distance scales, can be explored via such experiment--theory comparisons.