Probing short-range nucleon-nucleon interactions with an electron-ion collider
- Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States). Department of Physics
- Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States). Physics Department
- Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States). Physics Department; Heidelberg Univ. (Germany). Inst. for Theoretische Physik
For this research, we derive the cross section for exclusive vector meson production in high-energy deeply inelastic scattering off a deuteron target that disintegrates into a proton and a neutron carrying large relative momentum in the final state. This cross section can be expressed in terms of a novel gluon transition generalized parton distribution (T-GPD); the hard scale in the final state makes the T-GPD sensitive to the short-distance nucleon-nucleon interaction. We perform a toy model computation of this process in a perturbative framework and discuss the time scales that allow the separation of initial- and final-state dynamics in the T-GPD. We outline the more general computation based on the factorization suggested by the toy computation: In particular, we discuss the relative role of “pointlike” and “geometric” Fock configurations that control the parton dynamics of short-range nucleon-nucleon scattering. With the aid of exclusive J/ψ production data at the Hadron-Electron Ring Accelerator at DESY, as well as elastic nucleon-nucleon cross sections, we estimate rates for exclusive deuteron photodisintegration at a future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). Our results, obtained using conservative estimates of EIC integrated luminosities, suggest that center-of-mass energies sNN ~12GeV2 of the neutron-proton subsystem can be accessed. We argue that the high energies of the EIC can address outstanding dynamical questions regarding the short-range quark-gluon structure of nuclear forces by providing clean gluon probes of such “knockout” exclusive reactions in light and heavy nuclei.
- Research Organization:
- Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Nuclear Physics (NP)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0012704; FG02-97ER41014; FG02-97ER-41014
- OSTI ID:
- 1336044
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1246177
- Report Number(s):
- BNL-112264-2016-JA; KB0301020
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review C, Vol. 93, Issue 4; ISSN 2469-9985
- Publisher:
- APSCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Web of Science
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