Chirality in $(\vec{p},2p)$ reactions induced by proton helicity

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that polarized protons can induce and measure chirality in the final states of certain nuclear reactions at intermediate energies, revealing a coupling between proton helicity and orbital motion.

Contribution

It introduces the use of proton helicity to induce and analyze chirality in $(oldsymbol{p},pN)$ reactions, with theoretical models explaining the effect.

Findings

Large analyzing power $A_z$ indicates strong helicity-chirality coupling.

Theoretical models show the relationship between proton helicity and orbital motion.

Chirality can be controlled and measured using polarized proton beams.

Abstract

It is shown that longitudinally polarized protons can be used to induce chirality in the final states of the $(\vec{p},pN)$ reaction at intermediate energies, when there exist three final-state particles with non-coplanar momentum vectors. The analyzing power $A_z$ is proposed as a measure of this effect. Theoretical descriptions to obtain $A_z$ based on an intuitive picture as well as a distorted wave impulse approximation are presented, showing that the helicity of incident protons is coupled to the chirality of the orbital motion of a single-particle wave function, resulting in the chirality of the final states and a large $A_z$ value.