Nucleon and Roper electromagnetic elastic and transition form factors

TL;DR

This paper calculates nucleon and Roper baryon form factors using a symmetry-preserving contact interaction, revealing how infrared QCD effects and diquark correlations influence electromagnetic properties and resonance behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach using a contact interaction to study baryon form factors, emphasizing the role of diquark correlations and dressed-quark effects in electromagnetic structure.

Findings

Zero in the proton's d-quark Dirac form factor due to diquark correlations

Dressed-quark anomalous magnetic moment improves experimental agreement

Meson-cloud effects are significant at low Q^2 in form factor calculations

Abstract

We compute nucleon and Roper e.m. elastic and transition form factors using a symmetry-preserving treatment of a contact-interaction. Obtained thereby, the e.m. interactions of baryons are typically described by hard form factors. In contrasting this behaviour with that produced by a momentum-dependent interaction, one achieves comparisons which highlight that elastic scattering and resonance electroproduction experiments probe the infrared evolution of QCD's running masses; e.g., the existence, and location if so, of a zero in the ratio of nucleon Sachs form factors are strongly influenced by the running of the dressed-quark mass. In our description of baryons, diquark correlations are important. These correlations are instrumental in producing a zero in the Dirac form factor of the proton's d-quark; and in determining d_v/u_v(x=1), as we show via a formula that expresses d_v/u_v(x=1) in terms of the nucleon's diquark content. The contact interaction produces a first excitation of the nucleon that is constituted predominantly from axial-vector diquark correlations. This impacts greatly on the gamma*p->P_{11}(1440) form factors. Notably, our quark core contribution to F_2*(Q^2) exhibits a zero at Q^2~0.5mN^2. Faddeev equation treatments of a hadron's quark core usually underestimate its magnetic properties, hence we consider the effect produced by a dressed-quark anomalous e.m. moment. Its inclusion much improves agreement with experiment. On the domain 0<Q^2<2GeV^2, meson-cloud effects are important in making a realistic comparison between experiment and hadron structure calculations. Our computed helicity amplitudes are similar to the bare amplitudes in coupled-channels analyses of the electroproduction process. Thus supports a view that extant structure calculations should directly be compared with the bare-couplings, etc., determined via coupled-channels analyses.