Wide angle Compton scattering on the proton: study of power suppressed corrections

We study the wide angle Compton scattering process on a proton within the soft collinear factorization (SCET) framework. The main purpose of this work is to estimate the effect due to certain power suppressed corrections. We consider all possible kinematical power corrections and also include the subleading amplitudes describing the scattering with nucleon helicity flip. Under certain assumptions we present a leading-order factorization formula for these amplitudes which includes the hard- and soft-spectator contributions. We apply the formalism and perform a phenomenological analysis of the cross section and asymmetries in the wide angle Compton scattering on a proton. We assume that in the relevant kinematical region where $-t,-u>2.5$~GeV$^{2}$ the dominant contribution is provided by the soft-spectator mechanism. The hard coefficient functions of the corresponding SCET operators are taken in the leading-order approximation. The analysis of existing cross section data shows that the contribution of the helicity flip amplitudes to this observable is quite small and comparable with other expected theoretical uncertainties. We also show predictions for double polarization observables for which experimental information exists.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure

One Loop Chiral Corrections to Hard Exclusive Processes:I. Pion Case

We computed the leading non-analytic chiral corrections to the generalized parton distributions (GPDs) of the pion and to the two-pion distribution amplitudes. This allows us to obtain the corresponding corrections for the hard exclusive processes, such as gamma^* gamma -> pi pi, gamma^* N -> 2pi N' and deeply virtual Compton scattering on the pion target.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figure

Electroproduction of tensor mesons in QCD

Due to multiple possible polarizations hard exclusive production of tensor mesons by virtual photons or in heavy meson decays offers interesting possibilities to study the helicity structure of the underlying short-distance process. Motivated by the first measurement of the transition form factor $\gamma^*\gamma \to f_2(1270)$ at large momentum transfers by the BELLE collaboration we present an improved QCD analysis of this reaction in the framework of collinear factorization including contributions of twist-three quark-antiquark-gluon operators and an estimate of soft end-point corrections using light-cone sum rules. The results appear to be in a very good agreement with the data, in particular the predicted scaling behavior is reproduced in all cases.Comment: 27 pages, 5 figure

On chiral corrections to nucleon GPD

Within the pion-nucleon chiral perturbation theory we derive the leading chiral correction to the nucleon GPD at $\xi=0$. We discuss the difficulties of consideration of nonlocal light-cone operators within the theory with a heavy particle and the methods to solve the difficulties. The consideration of the chiral corrections directly for nonlocal operators allows to resolve the ambiguity of the inverse Mellin transformation. In particular, we show that the mixing between axial and vector GPDs are of order $m_\pi^2/M_N^2$, which is two orders of magnitude less that it follows from the Mellin moments calculation.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figure; minor corrections in the tex