2015/12/09 by Gerald A. Miller, Matthew D. Sievert, Raju Venugopalan · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Collider #Gluon #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Neutron #Nuclear physics #Nucleon #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Parton #Photodisintegration #Physics #Proton #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quark #hep-ph #nucl-ex #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevc.93.045202
published as Phys. Rev. C 93, 045202 (2016) · 51 pages, 17 figures
arxiv created 2015/12/09 · openalex publication_date 2016/04/07 · arxiv updated 2016/04/13 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
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/\ensuremathψ 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\ensuremath∼12\phantom\rule4.pt0exGeV2 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.