Impact of recent MINERvA measurement of the antineutrino-proton scattering cross-section on the generalized parton distributions

TL;DR

This paper assesses how the recent MINERvA antineutrino-proton scattering data influence the understanding of generalized parton distributions, confirming their universality and providing new constraints through comprehensive QCD analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed QCD analysis incorporating MINERvA data to refine GPDs, especially the polarized GPDs, and demonstrates their consistency with other experimental results.

Findings

MINERvA data impose new constraints on GPDs

Results are consistent with other experimental data

Predictions align with existing measurements of axial charge radius and form factors

Abstract

We investigate the impact of the new measurement of the antineutrino-proton scattering cross-section from the MINERvA Collaboration on generalized parton distributions (GPDs), particularly the polarized GPDs denoted as $\widetilde{H}^q$. To achieve this, we perform some QCD analyses of the MINERvA data, in addition to all available data of the proton's axial form factors. We demonstrate that MINERvA data lead to consistent results with other related experimental data, confirming the universality of GPDs. Our results indicate that MINERvA data can impose new constraints on GPDs, particularly on $\widetilde{H}^q$. Our predictions for the proton's axial charge radius, WACS cross-section, and axial form factor show good consistency with those of other studies and measurements. This leads us to conclude that the result of a more comprehensive analysis, considering all related experimental data, is not only reasonable but also more reliable, even in light of existing tensions among the data. The present study can be considered as a guideline for performing a new and comprehensive QCD global analysis of GPDs including the MINERvA measurements like that presented in Phys. Rev. D \textbf{107}, 096005 (2023).