Two-Quark Correlations in the Hard Electromagnetic Nucleon Form Factors

Abstract

The, so called, "hard-scattering approach" represents a suitable framework for the perturbative treatment of exclusive hadronic processes at large energies and (transverse) momentum transfers. In this context, diquarks can serve as a useful phenomenological concept to model non-perturbative effects which are still observable in the kinematic range accessible by present-day experiments. We outline how a description of baryons as quark-diquark systems can be understood as an effective theory in the sense that the pure quark hard-scattering approach is recovered in the limit of asymptotically large momentum transfers. Our arguments are based on a reformulation of the hard-scattering formalism in terms of quark-diquark degrees of freedom. This reformulation provides the exact form of photon- and gluon-diquark vertices and corresponding vertex functions (diquark form factors) in the limit of asymptotically large momentum transfers -- and thus also asymptotic constraints which should be fulfilled by phenomenological quark-diquark models for hard scattering. As an application of this reformulation we present an analysis of the hard electromagnetic nucleon form factors with respect to their quark-diquark content.