No Arabic abstract
The first CLAS12 experiments will provide high-precision data on inclusive electron scattering observables at a photon virtuality $Q^2$ ranging from 0.05 GeV$^2$ to 12 GeV$^2$ and center-of-mass energies $W$ up to 4 GeV. In view of this endeavour, we present the modeling of the resonant contributions to the inclusive electron scattering observables. As input, we use the existing CLAS electrocoupling results obtained from exclusive meson electroproduction data off protons, and evaluate for the first time the resonant contributions based on the experimental results on the nucleon resonance electroexcitation. The uncertainties are given by the data and duly propagated through a Monte Carlo approach. In this way, we obtain estimates for the resonant contributions, important for insight into the nucleon parton distributions in the resonance region and for the studies of quark-hadron duality.
We estimate the target-normal single-spin asymmetry at nearly forward angles in elastic electron-nucleon scattering. In the leading-order approximation, this asymmetry is proportional to the imaginary part of the two-photon exchange (TPE) amplitude, which can be expressed as an integral over the doubly virtual Compton scattering (VVCS) tensor. We develop a model that parametrizes the VVCS tensor for the case of nearly forward scattering angles. Our parametrization ensures a proper normalization of the imaginary part of the TPE amplitude on the well-known forward limit expression, which is given in terms of nucleon structure functions measurable in inelastic electron-nucleon scattering experiments. We discuss applicability limits of our theory and provide target-normal single-spin asymmetry predictions for both elastic electron-proton and electron-neutron scattering.
Nucleon resonance contributions to the inclusive proton $F_2$ and $F_L$ structure functions are computed from resonance electroexcitation amplitudes in the mass range up to 1.75 GeV extracted from CLAS exclusive meson electroproduction data. Taking into account for the first time quantum interference effects, the resonance contributions are compared with inclusive proton structure functions evaluated from $(e,eX)$ cross section data and the longitudinal to transverse cross section ratio. Contributions from isospin-1/2 and 3/2 resonances remain substantial over the entire range of photon virtualities $Q^2 lesssim 4$ GeV$^2$, where their electroexcitation amplitudes have been obtained, and their $Q^2$ evolution displays pronounced differences in the first, second and third resonance regions. We compare the structure functions in the resonance region with those computed from parton distributions fitted to deep-inelastic scattering data, and extrapolated to the resonance region, providing new quantitative assessments of quark-hadron duality in inclusive electron-proton scattering.
We study first the box-diagram contribution to the $gamma p,rightarrow ,K^0Sigma^+$ process to understand the anomaly of the kaon photoproduction cross section from CBELSA/TAPS experiment at Electron Stretcher Accelerator (ELSA), where the imaginary part of the scattering amplitude from the box-diagrams is calculated by using Cutkoskys rules in the on-shell approximation while the real part of the amplitude is derived by dispersion relation calculations. Together with the results of the K-MAID model, the contribution of the box-diagrams fails to provide the sudden drop of the differential cross-section between the $K^*,Lambda$ and $K^*,Sigma$ thresholds. In addition, we include the $Delta(1940)$ resonance in the process to complete the description of the differential cross-section. Combining the contributions from the K-MAID model, the box-diagrams and the $Delta(1940)$ resonance, we have obtained the theoretical differential cross-section the $gamma p,rightarrow ,K^0Sigma^+$ process, which is compatible with the CBELSA/TAPS experimental data.
Understanding the differences between the distribution of quarks bound in protons and neutrons is key for constraining the mechanisms of SU(6) spin-flavor symmetry breaking in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). While vast amounts of proton structure measurements were done, data on the structure of the neutron is much more spars as experiments typically extract the structure of neutrons from measurements of light atomic nuclei using model-dependent corrections for nuclear effects. Recently the MARATHON collaboration performed such an extraction by measuring inclusive deep-inelastic electron-scattering on helium-3 and tritium mirror nuclei where nuclear effects are expected to be similar and thus be suppressed in the helium-3 to tritium ratio. Here we evaluate the model dependence of this extraction by examining a wide range of models including the effect of using instant-form and light-cone nuclear wave functions and several different parameterizations of nucleon modification effects, including those with and without isospin dependence. We find that, while the data cannot differentiate among the different models of nuclear structure and nucleon modification, they consistently prefer a neutron-to-proton structure function ratio of at $x_B rightarrow 1$ of $sim 0.4$ with a typical uncertainty ($1sigma$) of $sim0.05$ and $sim0.10$ for isospin-independent and isospin-dependent modification models, respectively. While strongly favoring SU(6) symmetry breaking models based on perturbative QCD and the Schwinger-Dyson equation calculation, the MARATHON data do not completely rule out the scalar di-quark models if an isospin-dependent modification exist.
The experimental results of the future electron -- ion ($e A$) collider are expected to constrain the dynamics of the strong interactions at small values of the Bjorken -- $x$ variable and large nuclei. Recently it has been suggested that Coulomb corrections can be important in inclusive and diffractive $eA$ interactions. In this paper we present a detailed investigation of the impact of the Coulomb corrections to some of the observables that will be measured in the future $eA$ collider. In particular, we estimate the magnitude of these corrections for the charm and longitudinal cross sections in inclusive and diffractive interactions. Our results demonstrate that the Coulomb corrections for these observables are negligible, which implies that they can be used to probe the QCD dynamics.