Experimental Study of Tensor Structure Function of Deuteron

TL;DR

This paper reviews experimental approaches to studying the tensor structure functions of the deuteron, highlighting recent progress in polarization techniques and potential measurements at Jefferson Lab to deepen understanding of quark-gluon dynamics within the nucleus.

Contribution

It introduces new experimental schemes for extracting tensor structure functions of the deuteron, emphasizing advancements in polarization methods and potential for three-dimensional structure analysis.

Findings

Enhanced tensor polarization enables detailed DIS measurements.

Potential to extract transverse-momentum-dependent tensor structure functions.

Progress opens new avenues for understanding nuclear quark-gluon distributions.

Abstract

The deuteron is the lightest spin-1 nucleus, consisting of a weakly bound system of two spin-1/2 nucleons. One intriguing characteristic of the deuteron is the tensor polarized structure, which cannot be naively constructed combining the proton and neutron structure. The tensor structure of the deuteron provides unique insights into the quarks and gluons distributions and their dynamics within the nucleus. It can be studied experimentally through inclusive and semi-inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering (DIS) of electrons on tensor polarized deuterons. One-dimensional (longitudinal-momentum-dependent) tensor structure functions are extracted from the inclusive DIS, whereas three-dimensional with additional transverse-momentum-dependent tensor structure functions are extracted from the semi-inclusive DIS. Experimentally, achieving high tensor polarization for such measurements has been a challenge. Significant progress has recently been made in enhancing the tensor polarization for polarized deuteron target, opening up a new window for experimental studies of the deuteron tensor structure. In this article, we discuss the tensor structure functions of the deuteron and the experimental schemes to extract these functions at Jefferson Lab, highlighting the potential measurements of the transverse-momentum-dependent tensor structure functions.