Beam-Recoil Transferred Polarization in $K^+Y$ Electroproduction in the Nucleon Resonance Region with CLAS12

TL;DR

This paper reports new measurements of beam-recoil transferred polarizations in $K^+Y$ electroproduction using CLAS12, covering a broad kinematic range to enhance understanding of reaction mechanisms and nucleon structure.

Contribution

It provides the first extensive dataset of hyperon polarization in $K^+Y$ electroproduction at high energies, significantly expanding existing data for better reaction analysis.

Findings

Extended hyperon polarization data across wider kinematic range.

Improved constraints on reaction mechanisms in strangeness production.

Enhanced understanding of nucleon resonance spectrum.

Abstract

Beam-recoil transferred polarizations for the exclusive electroproduction of $K^+\Lambda$ and $K^+\Sigma^0$ final states from an unpolarized proton target have been measured using the CLAS12 spectrometer at Jefferson Laboratory. The measurements at beam energies of 6.535~GeV and 7.546~GeV span the range of four-momentum transfer $Q^2$ from 0.3 to 4.5~GeV$^2$ and invariant energy $W$ from 1.6 to 2.4~GeV, while covering the full center-of-mass angular range of the $K^+$. These new data extend the existing hyperon polarization data from CLAS in a similar kinematic range but from a significantly larger dataset. They represent an important addition to the world data, allowing for better exploration of the reaction mechanism in strangeness production processes, for further understanding of the spectrum and structure of excited nucleon states, and for improved insight into the strong interaction in the regime of non-perturbative dynamics.