Generalized parton distributions from neutrino experiments

The analysis of deeply virtual meson production is extended to neutrino-production of the pseudo-Goldstone mesons (pions, kaons, eta-mesons) on nucleons, with the flavor content of the recoil baryon either preserved, or changed to a hyperon from the same SU(3) octet. We rely on the SU(3) relations and express all the cross-sections in terms of the proton generalized parton distributions (GPDs). The corresponding amplitudes are calculated at the leading twist level and in the leading order in \alpha_{s}, using a phenomenological parametrization of GPDs. We also included in the analysis the electromagnetic O(alpha_{em})-corrections to neutrino-induced deeply virtual meson production (\nuDVMP). We found that such electromagnetic corrections decrease with Q^2 in the Bjorken regime less than the standard \nuDVMP handbag contribution, so the electromagnetic mechanism dominates at large Q^2. The electromagnetic corrections give rise to an angular correlation between the lepton and hadron scattering planes with harmonics sensitive to the real and imaginary parts of the DVMP amplitude. These corrections constitute a few percent effect in the kinematics of the forthcoming MINERvA experiment at Fermilab and should be taken into account in precise tests of GPD parametrizations. For virtualities Q^2~100 GeV^2 these corrections become on a par with \nuDVMP handbag contributions.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the DIS 2013 Workshop, Marseille, France, 22-26 April 201

Leading twist nuclear shadowing, nuclear generalized parton distributions and nuclear DVCS at small x

We generalize the leading twist theory of nuclear shadowing and calculate quark and gluon generalized parton distributions (GPDs) of spinless nuclei. We predict very large nuclear shadowing for nuclear GPDs. In the limit of the purely transverse momentum transfer, our nuclear GPDs become impact-parameter-dependent nuclear parton distributions (PDFs). Nuclear shadowing induces nontrivial correlations between the impact parameter b and the light-cone fraction x. We make predictions for the deeply virtual Compton scattering (DVCS) amplitude and the DVCS cross section on Pb-208 at high energies. We calculate the cross section of the Bethe-Heitler (BH) process and address the issue of the extraction of the DVCS signal from the e A \to e \gamma A cross section. We find that the e A \to e \gamma A differential cross section is dominated by DVCS at the momentum transfer t near the minima of the nuclear form factor. We also find that nuclear shadowing leads to dramatic oscillations of the DVCS beam-spin asymmetry, A_{LU}, as a function of t. The position of the points where A_{LU} changes sign is directly related to the magnitude of nuclear shadowing.Comment: 37 pages, 12 figures. Matches the published version, Phys. Rev. 79, 035210 (2009