Studying the Strangeness $D$-Term in Hall C via Exclusive $\phi$ Electroproduction

TL;DR

This paper proposes an experimental measurement of exclusive $phi$ electroproduction near threshold to investigate the strangeness $D$-term, aiming to clarify its contribution and explore related gluon and meson production phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces a novel measurement approach to determine the strangeness $D$-term and related quantities through exclusive $phi$ electroproduction near threshold.

Findings

Potential to distinguish between different hypotheses of the strangeness $D$-term.

First measurement of $ mf exteta'$ electroproduction.

Multi-differential measurements of $ mf exteta$ and $ mf extomega$ electroproduction.

Abstract

We propose a measurement of exclusive electroproduction of $\phi$ mesons near threshold in Hall C. We will measure the |t|-dependence of the exclusive $\phi$ electroproduction cross section, which has recently been proposed as an observable sensitive to the strangeness $D$-term. The contribution of strangeness to the total $D$-term is presently unknown, with different arguments favoring $D_s$ being large, being small, or even having opposite sign from the total $D$-term. Our exploratory measurement is designed to distinguish between these hypotheses. If $D_s$ turns out to be small, $\phi$ electroproduction can be used to study the gluon $D$-term. In addition, this dataset will allow us to perform measurements of other exclusive meson final states, including the first measurement of $\eta'$ electroproduction and multi-differential measurements of $\eta$ and $\omega$ electroproduction.