1. The Proton Spin Structure Function $g_2$ and Generalized Polarizabilities in the Strong QCD Regime
- Author
-
Ruth, D., Zielinski, R., Gu, C., Allada, M., Badman, T., Huang, M., Liu, J., Zhu, P., Allada, K., Zhang, J., Camsonne, A., Chen, J. P., Slifer, K., Aniol, K., Annand, J., Arrington, J., Averett, T., Baghdasaryan, H., Bellini, V., Boeglin, W., Brock, J., Carlin, C., Chen, C., Cisbani, E., Crabb, D., Daniel, A., Day, D., Duve, R., Fassi, L. El, Friedman, M., Fuchey, E., Gao, H., Gilman, R., Glamazdin, S., Gueye, P., Hafez, M., Han, Y., Hansen, O., Shabestari, M. Hashemi, Hen, O., Higinbotham, D., Horn, T., Iqbal, S., Jensen, E., Kang, H., Keith, C. D., Kelleher, A., Keller, D., Khanal, H., Korover, I., Kumbartzki, G., Li, W., Lichtenstadt, J., Lindgren, R., Long, E., Malace, S., Markowitz, P., Maxwell, J., Meekins, D. M., Meziani, Z. E., McLean, C., Michaels, R., Mihovilovic, M., Muangma, N., Camacho, C. Munoz, Musson, J., Myers, K., Oh, Y., Carmignotto, M. Pannunzio, Perdrisat, C., Phillips, S., Piasetzky, E., Pierce, J., Punjabi, V., Qiang, Y., Reimer, P. E., Roblin, Y., Ron, G., Rondon, O., Russo, G., Saenboonruang, K., Sawatzky, B., Shahinyan, A., Shneor, R., Sjoegren, J., Solvignon-Slifer, P., Sparveris, N., Sulkosky, V., Wesselmann, F., Yan, W., Yang, H., Yao, H., Ye, Z., Yurov, M., Zhang, Y., Zhao, Y. X., and Zheng, X.
- Subjects
Nuclear Experiment ,High Energy Physics - Experiment - Abstract
The strong interaction is not well understood at low energy, or for interactions with low momentum transfer $Q^2$, but one of the clearest insights we have comes from Chiral Perturbation Theory ($\chi$PT). This effective treatment gives testable predictions for the nucleonic generalized polarizabilities -- fundamental quantities describing the nucleon's response to an external field. We have measured the proton's generalized spin polarizabilities in the region where $\chi$PT is expected to be valid. Our results include the first ever data for the transverse-longitudinal spin polarizability $\delta_{LT}$, and also extend the coverage of the polarizability $\bar{d_2}$ to very low $Q^2$ for the first time. These results were extracted from moments of the structure function $g_2$, a quantity which characterizes the internal spin structure of the proton. Our experiment ran at Jefferson Lab using a polarized electron beam and a polarized solid ammonia (NH$_3$) target. The $\delta_{LT}$ polarizability has remained a challenging quantity for $\chi$PT to reproduce, despite its reduced sensitivity to higher resonance contributions; recent competing calculations still disagree with each other and also diverge from the measured neutron data at very low $Q^2$. Our proton results provide discriminating power between existing calculations, and will help provide a better understanding of this strong QCD regime.
- Published
- 2022