Color transparency in the reaction nuclear rho production by virtual photons

TL;DR

This paper investigates how nuclear transparency in rho meson production by virtual photons depends on photon virtuality, momentum transfer, and phase space, highlighting the effects of color transparency at high energies.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of nuclear transparency dependence on kinematic variables, incorporating color transparency effects in high-energy rho production.

Findings

Transparency varies significantly with momentum transfer $t$ even at low $Q^2$.

Transparency increases with $Q^2$ at fixed coherence length $l_c$ and $t$.

Dependence of $T$ on phase space is strong.

Abstract

We study the nuclear transparency $T$ for the exclusive reaction $\gamma^*+A\to\rho+p+(A-1)^*$ at incident virtual photon energies $\nu \ge$ 10 GeV %where the final state of the $A-1$-nucleon system is a one-hole state of the initial nucleus, to investigate the separate dependence on the photon virtuality, $Q^2$ and the 4-momentum-transfer-squared to the knocked-out proton, $t$. If the effects of color transparency are included, $T$ shows significant variation with $t$ even for small values of $Q^2$ for fixed values of the coherence length $l_c$, and also shows significant increase as $Q^2$ is increased at fixed $l_c$ and $t$. The value of $T$ is found to depend strongly on the phase space over which it is measured.