First Measurement of Hard Exclusive π- Δ++ Electroproduction Beam-Spin Asymmetries off the Proton

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.021901

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

7-14-2023

Publication Title

Physical Review Letters

Volume

131

Issue

2

ISSN

319007

Abstract

The polarized cross-section ratio σLT′/σ0 from hard exclusive π-Δ++ electroproduction off an unpolarized hydrogen target has been extracted based on beam-spin asymmetry measurements using a 10.2 GeV/10.6 GeV incident electron beam and the CLAS12 spectrometer at Jefferson Lab. The study, which provides the first observation of this channel in the deep-inelastic regime, focuses on very forward-pion kinematics in the valence regime, and photon virtualities ranging from 1.5 GeV2 up to 7 GeV2. The reaction provides a novel access to the d-quark content of the nucleon and to p→Δ++ transition generalized parton distributions. A comparison to existing results for hard exclusive π+n and π0p electroproduction is provided, which shows a clear impact of the excitation mechanism, encoded in transition generalized parton distributions, on the asymmetry.

Open Access

Hybrid_Gold

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