No Arabic abstract
Background: Measurements of exclusive meson production are a useful tool in the study of hadronic structure. In particular, one can discern the relevant degrees of freedom at different distance scales through these studies. Purpose: To study the transition between non-perturbative and perturbative Quantum Chromodyanmics as the square of four momentum transfer to the struck proton, -t, is increased. Method: Cross sections for the $^1$H(e,e$pi^+$)n reaction were measured over the -t range of 0.272 to 2.127 GeV$^2$ with limited azimuthal coverage at fixed beam energy of 4.709 GeV, Q$^2$ of 2.4 GeV$^2$ and W of 2.0 GeV at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) Hall C. Results: The -t dependence of the measured $pi^+$ electroproduction cross section generally agrees with prior data from JLab Halls B and C. The data are consistent with a Regge amplitude based theoretical model, but show poor agreement with a Generalized Parton Distribution (GPD) based model. Conclusion: The agreement of cross sections with prior data implies small contribution from the interference terms, and the confirmation of the change in t-slopes between the low and high -t regions previously observed in photoproduction indicates the changing nature of the electroproduction reaction in our kinematic regime.
The exclusive electroproduction of $pi^+$ above the resonance region was studied using the $rm{CEBAF}$ Large Acceptance Spectrometer ($rm{CLAS}$) at Jefferson Laboratory by scattering a 6 GeV continuous electron beam off a hydrogen target. The large acceptance and good resolution of $rm{CLAS}$, together with the high luminosity, allowed us to measure the cross section for the $gamma^* p to n pi^+$ process in 140 ($Q^2$, $x_B$, $t$) bins: $0.16<x_B<0.58$, 1.6 GeV$^2<$$Q^2$$<4.5$ GeV$^2$ and 0.1 GeV$^2<$$-t$$<5.3$ GeV$^2$. For most bins, the statistical accuracy is on the order of a few percent. Differential cross sections are compared to two theoretical models, based either on hadronic (Regge phenomenology) or on partonic (handbag diagram) degrees of freedom. Both can describe the gross features of the data reasonably well, but differ strongly in their ingredients. If the handbag approach can be validated in this kinematical region, our data contain the interesting potential to experimentally access transversity Generalized Parton Distributions.
The results on the photo- and electroexcitation amplitudes of most nucleon resonances in the mass range up to 2.0 GeV determined from the CLAS experimental data on exclusive $pi^+pi^-p$ photo-/electroproduction off protons in collaboration between the Jefferson Lab and Moscow State University are presented. The first and only available results on electroexcitation amplitudes from CLAS in a wide range of photon virtualities $Q^2$ $<$ 5.0 GeV$^2$ revealed the nucleon resonance structure as a complex interplay between the inner core of three dressed quarks and external meson-baryon cloud. These results shed light on the strong QCD dynamics which underlines the generation of excited nucleon states of different structural features from confined quarks and gluons. The future prospects of these studies in the new era of experiments with the CLAS12 detector, which started successfully in Spring of 2018, are outlined.
Exclusive neutral-pion electroproduction ($epto e^prime p^prime pi^0$) was measured at Jefferson Lab with a 5.75-GeV electron beam and the CLAS detector. Differential cross sections $d^4sigma/dtdQ^2dx_Bdphi_pi$ and structure functions $sigma_T+epsilonsigma_L, sigma_{TT}$ and $sigma_{LT}$ as functions of $t$ were obtained over a wide range of $Q^2$ and $x_B$. The data are compared with Regge and handbag theoretical calculations. Analyses in both frameworks find that a large dominance of transverse processes is necessary to explain the experimental results. For the Regge analysis it is found that the inclusion of vector meson rescattering processes is necessary to bring the magnitude of the calculated and measured structure functions into rough agreement. In the handbag framework, there are two independent calculations, both of which appear to roughly explain the magnitude of the structure functions in terms of transversity generalized parton distributions.
In these proceedings we present preliminary $pi^{+}pi^{-}$ electroproduction cross sections off protons in the kinematical area of 1.4 GeV $< W <$ 1.8 GeV and 0.4 GeV$^{2}$ $< Q^{2} < 1.1$ GeV$^{2}$. Our results extend the kinematical coverage for this exclusive channel with respect to previous measurements. Furthermore, the $pi^{+}pi^{-}$ electroproduction cross sections were obtained for $Q^2$-bins of much smaller size. The future analysis of this data within the framework of the JLAB-MSU reaction model (JM) will considerably improve our knowledge on the $Q^2$ evolution of the transition $gamma_{v}NN^*$ electrocouplings, in particular for the resonances with masses above 1.6 GeV.
We have measured beam-spin asymmetries to extract the $sinphi$ moment $A_{LU}^{sinphi}$ from the hard exclusive $vec{e} p to e^prime n pi^+$ reaction above the resonance region, for the first time with nearly full coverage from forward to backward angles in the center-of-mass. The $A_{LU}^{sinphi}$ moment has been measured up to 6.6 GeV$^{2}$ in $-t$, covering the kinematic regimes of Generalized Parton Distributions (GPD) and baryon-to-meson Transition Distribution Amplitudes (TDA) at the same time. The experimental results in very forward kinematics demonstrate the sensitivity to chiral-odd and chiral-even GPDs. In very backward kinematics where the TDA framework is applicable, we found $A_{LU}^{sinphi}$ to be negative, while a sign change was observed near 90$^circ$ in the center-of-mass. The unique results presented in this paper will provide critical constraints to establish reaction mechanisms that can help to further develop the GPD and TDA frameworks.