No Arabic abstract
We review recent developments in the theoretical investigation of the nucleon polarizabilities. We first report on the static polarizabilities as measured in real Compton scattering, comparing and interpreting the results from various theoretical approaches. In a second step, we extend the discussion to the generalized polarizabilities which can be accessed in virtual Compton scattering, showing how the information encoded in these quantities can provide a spatial interpretation of the induced polarization densities in the nucleon.
We obtain leading- and next-to-leading order predictions of chiral perturbation theory for several prominent moments of nucleon structure functions. These free-parameter free results turn out to be in overall agreement with the available empirical information on nearly all of the considered moments, in the region of low-momentum transfer ($Q^2 < 0.3$ GeV$^2$). Especially surprising is the situation for the spin polarizability $delta_{LT}$, which thus far was not reproducible in chiral perturbation theory for proton and neutron simultaneously. This problem, known as the $delta_{LT}$ puzzle, is not seen in the present calculation.
Apart from the quark and gluon kinetic and potential energies, the nucleon mass includes a novel energy of pure quantum origin resulting from anomalous breaking of scale symmetry. We demonstrate the effects of this quantum anomalous energy (QAE) in QED, as well as in a toy 1+1 dimensional non-linear sigma model where it contributes non-perturbatively, in a way resembling the Higgs mechanism for the masses of matter particles in electro-weak theory. The QAE contribution to the nucleon mass can be explained using a similar mechanism, in terms of a dynamical response of the gluonic scalar field through Higgs-like couplings between the nucleon and scalar resonances. In addition, the QAE sets the scale for other energies in the nucleon through a relativistic virial theorem, and contributes a negative pressure to confine the colored quarks.
A Poincare-covariant quark+diquark Faddeev equation is used to compute nucleon elastic form factors on $0leq Q^2leq 18 ,m_N^2$ ($m_N$ is the nucleon mass) and elucidate their role as probes of emergent hadronic mass in the Standard Model. The calculations expose features of the form factors that can be tested in new generation experiments at existing facilities, e.g. a zero in $G_E^p/G_M^p$; a maximum in $G_E^n/G_M^n$; and a zero in the protons $d$-quark Dirac form factor, $F_1^d$. Additionally, examination of the associated light-front-transverse number and anomalous magnetisation densities reveals, inter alia: a marked excess of valence $u$-quarks in the neighbourhood of the protons centre of transverse momentum; and that the valence $d$-quark is markedly more active magnetically than either of the valence $u$-quarks. The calculations and analysis also reveal other aspects of nucleon structure that could be tested with a high-luminosity accelerator capable of delivering higher beam energies than are currently available.
We present an extraction of the pion-nucleon ($pi N$) scattering lengths from low-energy $pi N$ scattering, by fitting a representation based on Roy-Steiner equations to the low-energy data base. We show that the resulting values confirm the scattering-length determination from pionic atoms, and discuss the stability of the fit results regarding electromagnetic corrections and experimental normalization uncertainties in detail. Our results provide further evidence for a large $pi N$ $sigma$-term, $sigma_{pi N}=58(5)$ MeV, in agreement with, albeit less precise than, the determination from pionic atoms.
Gluon dressing of the light quarks within hadrons is very strong and extremely important in that it dynamically generates most of the observable mass through the breaking of chiral symmetry. The quark and gluon parton densities, $q(x)$ and $g(x)$, are necessarily interrelated since any gluon emission and absorption process, especially dressing of a quark, contributes to $g(x)$ and modifies $q(x)$. Guided by long-established results for the parton-in-parton distributions from a strict 1-loop perturbative analysis of a quark target, we extend the non-perturbative QCD approach based on the Rainbow-Ladder truncation of the Dyson-Schwinger equations to describe the interrelated valence $q_{rm v}(x)$ and the dressing-gluon $g(x)$ for a hadron at its intrinsic model scale. We employ the pion description from previous DSE work that accounted for the gluon-in-quark effect and introduce a simple model of the nucleon for exploratory purposes. We find typically mbox{$langle x rangle_g sim 0.20$} for both pion and nucleon at the model scale, and the valence quark helicity contributes 52% of nucleon spin. We deduce both $q_{rm v}(x)$ and $g(x)$ from 30 calculated Mellin moments, and after adopting existing data analysis results for $q_{rm sea}(x)$, we find that NLO scale evolution produces $g(x)$ in good agreement with existing data analysis results for the pion at 1.3 GeV and the nucleon at 5 GeV$^2$. At the scale 2 GeV typical of lattice-QCD calculations, we obtain mbox{$langle x rangle_g^{rm N} = 0.42$} in good agreement with 0.38 from the average of recent lattice-QCD calculations.