Hard Two-Body Photodisintegration of He-3

We have measured cross sections for the gamma He-3 -\u3e pd reaction at photon energies of 0.4-1.4 GeV and a center-of-mass angle of 90 degrees. We observe dimensional scaling above 0.7 GeV at this center-of-mass angle. This is the first observation of dimensional scaling in the photodisintegration of a nucleus heavier than the deuteron

Near-threshold neutral pion electroproduction at high momentum transfers and generalized form factors

We report the measurement of near-threshold neutral pion electroproduction cross sections and the extraction of the associated structure functions on the proton in the kinematic range Q(2) from 2 to 4.5 GeV2 and W from 1.08 to 1.16 GeV. These measurements allow us to access the dominant pion-nucleon s-wave multipoles E0+ and S0+ in the near-threshold region. In the light-cone sum-rule framework (LCSR), these multipoles are related to the generalized form factors G(1)(pi 0p) (Q(2)) and G(2)(pi 0p) (Q(2)). The data are compared to these generalized form factors and the results for G(1)(pi 0p) (Q(2)) are found to be in good agreement with the LCSR predictions, but the level of agreement with G(2)(pi 0p) (Q(2)) is poor. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevC.87.04520

Cross Sections for the Exclusive Photon Electroproduction on the Proton and Generalized Parton Distributions

Unpolarized and beam-polarized fourfold cross sections (d4σ/dQ2dxBdtdϕ) for the ep → e\u27p\u27γ reaction were measured using the CLAS detector and the 5.75-GeV polarized electron beam of the Jefferson Lab accelerator, for 110 (Q2;xB;t) bins over the widest phase space ever explored in the valence-quark region. Several models of generalized parton distributions (GPDs) describe the data well at most of our kinematics. This increases our confidence that we understand the GPD H, expected to be the dominant contributor to these observables. Through a leading-twist extraction of Compton form factors, these results support the model predictions of a larger nucleon size at lower quark-momentum fraction xB

Precise Determination of the Deuteron Spin Structure at Low to Moderate Q² with CLAS and Extraction of the Neutron Contribution

We present the final results for the deuteron spin structure functions obtained from the full data set collected in 2000–2001 with Jefferson Lab\u27s continuous electron beam accelerator facility (CEBAF) using the CEBAF large acceptance spectrometer (CLAS). Polarized electrons with energies of 1.6, 2.5, 4.2, and 5.8 GeV were scattered from deuteron (15ND3 ) targets, dynamically polarized along the beam direction, and detected with CLAS. From the measured double-spin asymmetry, the virtual photon absorption asymmetry Ad1 and the polarized structure function gd1 were extracted over a wide kinematic range (0.05GeV2 \u3c Q2 \u3c 5GeV2 and 0.9 GeV \u3c W \u3c 3GeV ). We use an unfolding procedure and a parametrization of the corresponding proton results to extract from these data the polarized structure functions An1 and gn1 of the (bound) neutron, which are so far unknown in the resonance region, W \u3c 2 GeV. We compare our final results, including several moments of the deuteron and neutron spin structure functions, with various theoretical models and expectations, as well as parametrizations of the world data. The unprecedented precision and dense kinematic coverage of these data can aid in future extractions of polarized parton distributions, tests of perturbative QCD predictions for the quark polarization at large x , a better understanding of quark-hadron duality, and more precise values for higher-twist matrix elements in the framework of the operator product expansion

First Exclusive Measurement of Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering off \u3csup\u3e4\u3c/sup\u3eHe: Toward the 3D Tomography of Nuclei

We report on the first measurement of the beam-spin asymmetry in the exclusive process of coherent deeply virtual Compton scattering off a nucleus. The experiment uses the 6 GeV electron beam from the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) accelerator at Jefferson Lab incident on a pressurized 4He gaseous target placed in front of the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS). The scattered electron is detected by CLAS and the photon by a dedicated electromagnetic calorimeter at forward angles. To ensure the exclusivity of the process, a specially designed radial time projection chamber is used to detect the recoiling 4He nuclei. We measure beam-spin asymmetries larger than those observed on the free proton in the same kinematic domain. From these, we are able to extract, in a model-independent way, the real and imaginary parts of the only 4He Compton form factor, HA. This first measurement of coherent deeply virtual Compton scattering on the 4He nucleus, with a fully exclusive final state via nuclear recoil tagging, leads the way toward 3D imaging of the partonic structure of nuclei

Scaling study of the pion electroproduction cross sections and the pion form factor

The $^{1}$H($e,e^\prime \pi^+$)n cross section was measured for a range of four-momentum transfer up to $Q^2$=3.91 GeV$^2$ at values of the invariant mass, $W$, above the resonance region. The $Q^2$-dependence of the longitudinal component is consistent with the $Q^2$-scaling prediction for hard exclusive processes. This suggests that perturbative QCD concepts are applicable at rather low values of $Q^2$. Pion form factor results, while consistent with the $Q^2$-scaling prediction, are inconsistent in magnitude with perturbative QCD calculations. The extraction of Generalized Parton Distributions from hard exclusive processes assumes the dominance of the longitudinal term. However, transverse contributions to the cross section are still significant at $Q^2$=3.91 GeV$^2$.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure