Physics Opportunities at a Photon--Photon Collider
- SLAC
The advent of back-scattered laser beams for e{sup +}e{sup -} colliders will allow detailed studies of a large array of high energy {gamma}{gamma} and {gamma}e collision processes with polarized beams. These include tests of electroweak theory in photon-photon annihilation such as {gamma}{gamma} {yields} W{sup +}W{sup -}, {gamma}{gamma} {yields} Higgs bosons, and higher-order loop processes, such as {gamma}{gamma} {yields} {gamma}{gamma}, H{sup 0}Z{sup 0} and ZZ: Methods for measuring the anomalous magnetic and quadrupole moments of the W and Z gauge bosons to high precision in polarized electron-photon and photon-photon collisions are discussed. Since each photon can be resolved into a W{sup +}W{sup -} pair, high energy photon-photon collisions can also provide a remarkably background-free laboratory for studying WW collisions and annihilation. I also review high energy {gamma}{gamma} and e{gamma} tests of quantum chromodynamics, including the production of two gluon jets in photon-photon collisions, deeply virtual Compton scattering on a photon target, and leading-twist single-spin asymmetries for a photon polarized normal to a production plane. Exclusive hadron production processes in photon-photon collisions provide important tests of QCD at the amplitude level, particularly as measures of hadron distribution amplitudes which are also important for the analysis of exclusive semi-leptonic and two-body hadronic B-decays.
- Research Organization:
- Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Menlo Park, CA (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Research (ER) (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC03-76SF00515
- OSTI ID:
- 799042
- Report Number(s):
- SLAC-PUB-9197
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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