The Double Spin Asymmetry of Nitrogen in Elastic and Quasielastic Kinematics from a Solid Ammonia Dynamically Polarized Target

Abstract

Solid ammonia (NH$_3$) is commonly used as a dynamically polarized proton target for electron and muon scattering cross-section asymmetry measurements. As spin 1$^{+}$ particles, the $^{14}$N nuclei in the target are also polarized and contribute a non-trivial asymmetry background that should be addressed. We describe here a method to extract the nitrogen contribution to the asymmetry, and report the cross-section asymmetries of electron-nitrogen scattering at beam energies of $E=1.7$ GeV and $E=2.2$ GeV, and momentum transfer of $Q^{2}=0.023-0.080$ GeV$^{2}$.