Electroweak structure of the nucleon, meson cloud and light-cone wavefunctions

The meson-cloud model of the nucleon consisting of a system of three valence quarks surrounded by a meson cloud is applied to study the electroweak structure of the proton and neutron. Light-cone wavefunctions are derived for the dressed nucleon as pictured to be part of the time a bare nucleon and part of the time a baryon-meson system. Configurations are considered where the baryon can be a nucleon or a \Delta and the meson can be a pion as well as a vector meson such as the \rho or the \omega. An overall good description of the electroweak form factors is obtained. The contribution of the meson cloud is small and only significant at low Q^2. Mixed-symmetry S'-wave components in the wavefunction are most important to reproduce the neutron electric form factor. Charge and magnetization densities are deduced as a function of both the radial distance from the nucleon center and the transverse distance with respect to the direction of the three-momentum transfer. In the latter case a central negative charge is found for the neutron. The up and down quark distributions associated with the Fourier transform of the axial form factor have opposite sign, with the consequence that the probability to find an up (down) quark with positive helicity is maximal when it is (anti)aligned with the proton helicity.Comment: references updated and typos in figure 2 corrected; to be published in Phys. Rev.

On the Origin of Model Relations among Transverse-Momentum Dependent Parton Distributions

Transverse-momentum dependent parton distributions (TMDs) are studied in the framework of quark models. In particular, quark-model relations among TMDs are reviewed, elucidating their physical origin in terms of the quark-spin structure in the nucleon. The formal aspects of the derivation of these relations are complemented with explicit examples, emphasizing how and to which extent the conditions which lead to relations among TMDs are implemented in different classes of quark models.Comment: 38 pages, 3 figures, 3 table

Modeling the transverse momentum dependent parton distributions

We review quark model calculations of the transverse momentum dependent parton distributions (TMDs). For the T-even TMDs, we discuss the physical origin of model relations which hold in a large class of quark models. For the T-odd TMDs we review results in a light-cone constituent quark model (CQM) with the final state interaction effects generated via single-gluon exchange mechanism. As phenomenological application, we show the good agreement between results in the light-cone CQM and available experimental data for the Collins asymmetry.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables; invited talk at "The 4th Workshop on Exclusive Reactions at High Momentum Transfer", Jefferson Lab., May 18-21, 201

Models for TMDs and numerical methods

We study the connection between the quark orbital angular momentum and the pretzelosity transverse-momentum dependent parton distribution function. We discuss the origin of this relation in quark models, identifying as key ingredient for its validity the assumption of spherical symmetry for the nucleon in its rest frame. Finally we show that the individual quark contributions to the orbital angular momentum obtained from this relation can not be interpreted as the intrinsic contributions, but include the contribution from the transverse centre of momentum which cancels out only in the total orbital angular momentum.Comment: 43 pages, 8 figures; proceedings of International School of Physics "Enrico Fermi", Course CLXXX - "Three-dimensional Partonic Structure of the Nucleon", 28 June - 8 July 2011, Varenna (Italy

Dispersion Theory in Electromagnetic Interactions

We review various applications of dispersion relations (DRs) to the electromagnetic structure of hadrons. We discuss the way DRs allow one to extract information on hadron structure constants by connecting information from complementary scattering processes. We consider the real and virtual Compton scattering processes off the proton, and summarize recent advances in the DR analysis of experimental data to extract the proton polarizabilities, in comparison with alternative studies based on chiral effective field theories. We discuss a multipole analysis of real Compton scattering data, along with a DR fit of the energy-dependent dynamical polarizabilities. Furthermore, we review new sum rules for the double-virtual Compton scattering process off the proton, which allow for model independent relations between polarizabilities in real and virtual Compton scattering, and moments of nucleon structure functions. The information on the double-virtual Compton scattering is used to predict and constrain the polarizability corrections to muonic hydrogen spectroscopy.Comment: preprint version of a review to appear in Ann. Rev. Nucl. Part. Sci. 68 (2018

A view of the Galactic halo using beryllium as a time scale

Beryllium stellar abundances were suggested to be a good tracer of time in the early Galaxy. In an investigation of its use as a cosmochronometer, using a large sample of local halo and thick-disk dwarfs, evidence was found that in a log(Be/H) vs. [alpha/Fe] diagram the halo stars separate into two components. One is consistent with predictions of evolutionary models while the other is chemically indistinguishable from the thick-disk stars. This is interpreted as a difference in the star formation history of the two components and suggests that the local halo is not a single uniform population where a clear age-metallicity relation can be defined.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, IAU Symposium, Volume 265, Chemical abundances in the Universe: connecting first stars to planets, K. Cunha, M. Spite and B. Barbuy, eds. 2 Pages, 2 figure

Transverse pion structure beyond leading twist in constituent models

The understanding of the pion structure as described in terms of transverse-momentum dependent parton distribution functions (TMDs) is of importance for the interpretation of currently ongoing Drell-Yan experiments with pion beams. In this work we discuss the description of pion TMDs beyond leading twist in a pion model formulated in the light-front constituent framework. For comparison, we also review and derive new results for pion TMDs in the bag and spectator models.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures; v2: modified presentation, updated references; matches the journal versio

Pion polarizabilities: No conflict between dispersion theory and ChPT

Recent attempts to determine the pion polarizability by dispersion relations yield values that disagree with the predictions of chiral perturbation theory. These dispersion relations are based on specific forms for the absorptive part of the Compton amplitudes. The analytic properties of these forms are examined, and the strong enhancement of intermediate-meson contributions is shown to be connected to non-analytic structuresComment: 9 pages, 4 figures; Proceedings of 6th International Workshop on Chiral Dynamics, 6-10 July 2009, Bern, Switzerlan

Proton scalar dipole polarizabilities from real Compton scattering data, using fixed-t subtracted dispersion relations and the bootstrap method

We perform a fit of the real Compton scattering (RCS) data below pion-production threshold to extract the electric ($\alpha_{E1}$) and magnetic ($\beta_{M1}$) static scalar dipole polarizabilities of the proton, using fixed-$t$ subtracted dispersion relations and a bootstrap-based fitting technique. The bootstrap method provides a convenient tool to include the effects of the systematic errors on the best values of $\alpha_{E1}$ and $\beta_{M1}$ and to propagate the statistical errors of the model parameters fixed by other measurements. We also implement various statistical tests to investigate the consistency of the available RCS data sets below pion-production threshold and we conclude that there are not strong motivations to exclude any data point from the global set. Our analysis yields $\alpha_{E1} = (12.03^{+0.48}_{-0.54})\times 10^{-4} \text{fm}^3$ and $\beta_{M1} = (1.77^{+0.52}_{-0.54})\times 10^{-4} \text{fm}^3$, with p-value $= 12\%$.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures, 4 tables; final version accepted for publication in J. Phys.

Light-Front Densities for Transversely Polarized Hadrons

We discuss the recent interpretation of quark distribution functions in the plane transverse to the light-cone direction. Such a mapping is model independent and allows one to build multidimensional pictures of the hadron and to develop a semi-classical intuition of the quark dynamics. We comment briefly the results obtained from the Form Factors of the nucleon. A generalization to a target with arbitrary spin led to a set of preferred values for the electromagnetic coupling characterizing structureless particles. Generalized polarizabilities can also be interpreted in that frame as the distortion of the charge densities due to an external electromagnetic field. Finally, we present preliminary results for the Generalized Transverse-Momentum dependent Distributions which encode in principle the most complete information about quark distributions.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, 1 table; contribution to the proceedings of "The 4th Workshop on Exclusive Reactions at High Momentum Transfer", Jefferson Lab., May 18-21, 201