Two-photon physics

It is reviewed how Compton scattering sum rules relate low-energy nucleon structure quantities to the nucleon excitation spectrum. In particular, the GDH sum rule and recently proposed extensions of it will be discussed. These extensions are sometimes more calculationally robust, which may be an advantage when estimating the chiral extrapolations of lattice QCD results, such as for anomalous magnetic moments. Subsequently, new developments in our description of the nucleon excitation spectrum will be discussed, in particular a recently developed chiral effective field theory framework for the $\Delta(1232)$-resonance region. Within this framework, we discuss results on $N$ and $\Delta$ masses, the $\gamma N \Delta$ transition and the $\Delta$ magnetic dipole moment.Comment: 10 pages, prepared for proceedings of Symposium on 20 Years of Physics at the Mainz Mikrotro

Deeply virtual electroproduction of photons and mesons on the nucleon

We give predictions for the leading order amplitudes for deeply virtual Compton scattering and hard meson electroproduction reactions at large Q^2 in the valence region in terms of skewed quark distributions. We give first estimates for the power corrections to these leading order amplitudes. In particular, we outline examples of experimental opportunities to access the skewed parton distributions at the current high-energy lepton facilities : JLab, HERMES and COMPASS.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Invited talk at XVth Particles and Nuclei International Conference (PANIC 99), Uppsala, Sweden, 10-16 June 1999. To be published by World Scientific (Singapore

Single meson contributions to the muon's anomalous magnetic moment

We develop the formalism to provide an improved estimate for the hadronic light-by-light correction to the muon's anomalous magnetic moment a_{\mu}, by considering single meson contributions beyond the leading pseudo-scalar mesons. We incorporate available experimental input as well as constraints from light-by-light scattering sum rules to estimate the effects of axial-vector, scalar, and tensor mesons. We give numerical evaluations for the hadronic light-by-light contribution of these states to a_{\mu}. The presented formalism allows to further improve on these estimates, once new data for such meson states will become available.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Subtracted dispersion relation formalism for the two-photon exchange correction to elastic electron-proton scattering: comparison with data

We apply a subtracted dispersion relation formalism with the aim to improve predictions for the two-photon exchange corrections to elastic electron-proton scattering observables at finite momentum transfers. We study the formalism on the elastic contribution, and make a detailed comparison with existing data for unpolarized cross sections as well as polarization transfer observables.Comment: 49 pages, 26 figures, version published in Eur. Phys. J. A 51, no. 2, 24 (2015

Dispersive analysis of the γγ∗→ππ\gamma\gamma^{*} \to \pi \pi process

We present a theoretical study of the $\gamma\gamma^{*} \to \pi^+\pi^-, \pi^0\pi^0$ processes from the threshold through the $f_2(1270)$ region in the $\pi\pi$ invariant mass. We adopt the Omn\`es representation in order to account for rescattering effects in both s- and d-partial waves. For the description of the $f_0(980)$ resonance, we implement a coupled-channel unitarity. The constructed amplitudes serve as an essential framework to interpret the current experimental two-photon fusion program at BESIII. They also provide an important input for the dispersive analyses of the hadronic light-by-light scattering contribution to the muon's anomalous magnetic moment.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures (journal version

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