New framework for extracting GPDs from exclusive photon electroproduction

TL;DR

This paper extends a new theoretical framework for exclusive photon electroproduction to better extract generalized parton distributions (GPDs) from experimental data, offering a clearer understanding of the underlying physics.

Contribution

The work generalizes a recent formalism for $2 o 3$ reactions to the case of real-photon electroproduction, improving the systematic extraction of GPDs.

Findings

Provides a more transparent reaction formalism.

Enables systematic GPD extraction from experiments.

Facilitates better understanding of nucleon structure.

Abstract

Recently, a new framework for studying generic $2 \to 3$ hard exclusive reactions, referred to as single-diffractive hard exclusive processes, has been introduced to provide a cleaner separation of the underlying physical mechanisms. In this work, we expand this formalism to the case of exclusive real-photon electroproduction off a nucleon, $e(\ell) + N(p) \to e(\ell') + N(p') + \gamma(q')$, which represents the classical channel for accessing generalized parton distributions (GPDs) in nucleons and nuclei. This extension enables a more systematic and physically transparent formulation of the reaction dynamics, paving the way for improved extractions of GPDs from experimental data as compared to existing approaches.