Electromagnetic Single-nucleon Response involving Polarized Targets

TL;DR

This paper extends the covariant formalism of electromagnetic responses to polarized nucleon scattering, providing detailed response functions and analyzing the validity of common approximations in nuclear physics applications.

Contribution

It introduces a transparent set of EM response functions for polarized nucleon scattering, facilitating expansions in nucleon momentum for nuclear physics modeling.

Findings

Full responses compared with common approximations show varying validity.

Expanded responses are accurate under certain kinematic conditions.

Detailed discussion of EM current operators and their approximations.

Abstract

This work is an extension of our past study focused on a covariant representation of the electromagnetic (EM) current of spin-1/2 Dirac particles, specifically, nucleons. In the past study the EM responses that occur in unpolarized electron scattering from unpolarized nucleons were derived; however, scattering of polarized electrons from polarized nucleons was beyond the scope of that earlier work. Here such extensions are studied in detail. While in other work the EM response has already been developed for the double-polarization scattering problem, that effort was focused on high-energy collider physics. In the present study the formalism is recast into a set of EM response functions that have transparent dependencies on the relevant kinematic variables, especially on how these behave with respect to the momentum p of the (moving) struck, polarized nucleon. The motivation for such a reformulation of the problem is the desire to see a clear path to expansions in $p$ of the EM response for use in devising ``prescriptions for nuclear physics''. Results are provided where comparisons of the full (unexpanded) responses with various approximations that are frequently employed in studies of EM nuclear physics are made, demonstrating that under some circumstances such approximations are reasonable, whereas in other circumstances the expanded results are likely to be invalid. In addition, the EM current operators and approximations to them are discussed in detail.