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A. Schaefer

Publications and source records attributed to A. Schaefer.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
arXiv2002

Exclusive annihilation p pbar -> gamma gamma in a generalized parton picture

Exclusive proton-antiproton annihilation into two photons at large s (~10 GeV^2) and |t|,|u| ~ s can be described by a generalized parton picture analogous to the 'soft mechanism' in wide-angle real Compton scattering. The two photons are emitted in the annihilation of a single fast quark and antiquark. The matrix element describing the transition of the p-pbar system to a q-qbar pair can be related to the timelike proton elastic form factors as well as to the quark/antiquark distributions measured in inclusive deep-inelastic scattering. The reaction could be studied with the proposed 1.5-15 GeV high-luminosity antiproton storage ring (HESR) at GSI.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2002

Cronin Effect in Hadron Production off Nuclei

Recent data from RHIC for high-$p_T$ hadrons in gold-gold collisions raised again the long standing problem of quantitatively understanding the Cronin effect, i.e. nuclear enhancement of high-$p_T$ hadrons due to multiple interactions in nuclear matter. In nucleus-nucleus collisions this effect has to be reliably calculated as baseline for a signal of new physics in high-$p_T$ hadron production. The only possibility to test models is to compare with available data for $pA$ collisions, however, all existing models for the Cronin effect rely on a fit to the data to be explained. We develop a phenomenological description based on the light-cone QCD-dipole approach which allows to explain available data without fitting to them and to provide predictions for $pA$ collisions at RHIC and LHC. We point out that the mechanism causing Cronin effect drastically changes between the energies of fixed target experiments and RHIC-LHC. High-$p_T$ hadrons are produced incoherently on different nucleons at low energies, whereas the production amplitudes interfere if the energy is sufficiently high.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2002

Polarized antiquark flavor asymmetry: Pauli blocking vs. the pion cloud

The flavor asymmetry of the unpolarized antiquark distributions in the proton, dbar(x) - ubar(x) > 0, can qualitatively be explained either by Pauli blocking by the valence quarks, or as an effect of the pion cloud of the nucleon. In contrast, predictions for the polarized asymmetry Delta_ubar(x) - Delta_dbar(x) based on rho meson contributions disagree even in sign with the Pauli blocking picture. We show that in the meson cloud picture a large positive Delta_ubar(x) - Delta_dbar(x) is obtained from pi-N - sigma-N interference-type contributions, as suggested by chiral symmetry. This effect restores the equivalence of the 'quark' and 'meson' descriptions also in the polarized case.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2001

QCD factorization for the pion diffractive dissociation to two jets

We calculate the cross section of a pion diffraction dissociation in two jets with large transverse momenta originating from a hard gluon exchange between the pion constituents. To the leading logarithmic accuracy (in energy), the contribution coming from small transverse separations between the quark and the antiquark in the pion acquires the expected factorized form, the longitudinal momentum distribution of the jets being proportional to the pion distribution amplitude. The hard gluon exchange can in this case be considered as a part of the unintegrated gluon distribution. Beyond the leading logarithms (in energy) this proportionality does not hold. Moreover, the collinear factorization appears to be broken by the end-point singularities. Remarkably enough, the longitudinal momentum distribution of the jets for the non-factorizable contribution is calculable, and turns out to be the same as for the factorizable contribution with the asymptotic pion distribution amplitude.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2001

Color Transparency versus Quantum Coherence in Electroproduction of Vector Mesons off Nuclei

So far no theoretical tool for the comprehensive description of exclusive electroproduction of vector mesons off nuclei at medium energies has been developed. We suggest a light-cone QCD formalism which is valid at any energy and incorporates formation effects (color transparency), the coherence length and the gluon shadowing. At medium energies color transparency (CT) and the onset of coherence length (CL) effects are not easily separated. Indeed, although nuclear transparency measured by the HERMES experiment rises with Q^2, it agrees with predictions of the vector dominance model (VDM) without any CT effects. Our new results and observations are: (i) the good agreement with the VDM found earlier is accidental and related to the specific correlation between Q^2 and CL for HERMES kinematics; (ii) CT effects are much larger than have been estimated earlier within the two channel approximation. They are even stronger at low than at high energies and can be easily identified by HERMES or at JLab; (iii) gluon shadowing which is important at high energies is calculated and included; (iv) our parameter-free calculations explain well available data for variation of nuclear transparency with virtuality and energy of the photon; (v) predictions for electroproduction of ρand ϕare provided for future measurements at HERMES and JLab.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2001

QCD at high baryon density in a random matrix model

A high density diquark phase seems to be a generic feature of QCD. If so it should also be reproduced by random matrix models. We discuss a specific one in which the random matrix elements of the Dirac operator are supplemented by a finite chemical potential and by non-random elements which model the formation of instanton-anti-instanton molecules. Comparing our results to those found in a previous investigation by Vanderheyden and Jackson we find additional support for our starting assumption, namely that the existence of a high density diquark phase is common to all QCD-like models.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2001

Angular distributions in hard exclusive production of pion pairs

Using the leading order amplitudes of hard exclusive electroproduction of pion pairs we have analyzed the angular distribution of the two produced particles. At leading twist a pion pair can be produced only in an isovector or an isoscalar state. We show that certain components of the angular distribution only get contributions from the interference of the I=1 and the (much smaller) I=0 amplitude. Therefore our predictions prove to be a good probe of isospin zero pion pair production. We predict effects of a measurable size that could be observed at experiments like HERMES. We also discuss how hard exclusive pion pair production can provide us with new information on the effective chiral Lagrangian.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2000

Electron Scattering with Polarized Targets at TESLA

Measurements of polarized electron-nucleon scattering can be realized at the TESLA linear collider facility with projected luminosities that are about two orders of magnitude higher than those expected of other experiments at comparable energies. Longitudinally polarized electrons, accelerated as a small fraction of the total current in the e+ arm of TESLA, can be directed onto a solid state target that may be either longitudinally or transversely polarized. A large variety of polarized parton distribution and fragmentation functions can be determined with unprecedented accuracy, many of them for the first time. A main goal of the experiment is the precise measurement of the x- and Q^2-dependence of the experimentally totally unknown quark transversity distributions that will complete the information on the nucleon's quark spin structure as relevant for high energy processes. Comparing their Q^2-evolution to that of the corresponding helicity distributions constitutes an important precision test of the predictive power of QCD in the spin sector. Measuring transversity distributions and tensor charges allows access to the hitherto unmeasured chirally odd operators in QCD which are of great importance to understand the role of chiral symmetry. The possibilities of using unpolarized targets and of experiments with a real photon beam turn TESLA-N into a versatile next-generation facility at the intersection of particle and nuclear physics.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2000

Nonperturbative Effects in Gluon Radiation and Photoproduction of Quark Pairs

We introduce a nonperturbative interaction for light-cone fluctuations containing quarks and gluons. The $\bar qq$ interaction squeezes the transverse size of these fluctuations in the photon and one does not need to simulate this effect via effective quark masses. The strength of this interaction is fixed by data. Data on diffractive dissociation of hadrons and photons show that the nonperturbative interaction of gluons is much stronger. We fix the parameters for the nonperturbative quark-gluon interaction by data for diffractive dissociation to large masses (triple-Pomeron regime). This allows us to predict nuclear shadowing for gluons which turns out to be not as strong as perturbative QCD predicts. We expect a delayed onset of gluon shadowing at $x \leq 10^{-2}$ shadowing of quarks. Gluon shadowing turns out to be nearly scale invariant up to virtualities $Q^2\sim 4 GeV^2$ due to presence of a semihard scale characterizing the strong nonperturbative interaction of gluons. We use the same concept to improve our description of gluon bremsstrahlung which is related to the distribution function for a quark-gluon fluctuation and the interaction cross section of a $\bar qqG$ fluctuation with a nucleon. We expect the nonperturbative interaction to suppress dramatically the gluon radiation at small transverse momenta compared to perturbative calculations.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2000

Sum rules for the T-odd fragmentation functions

The conservation of the intrinsic transverse momentum during parton fragmentation imposes non-trivial constraints on T-odd fragmentation functions. These significantly enhance the differences between the favoured and unfavoured fragmentation functions, which could be relevant to understand the azimuthal asymmetries of charged pion production observed recently by the HERMES collaboration.

hep-ph↗
arXiv1999

Gluon Condensate and Non-Perturbative Quark-Photon Vertex

We evaluate the quark-photon vertex non-perturbatively taking into account the gluon condensate at finite temperature. This vertex is related to the previously derived effective quark propagator by a QED like Ward-Takahashi identity. The importance of the effective vertex for the dilepton production rate from a quark-gluon plasma is stressed.

hep-ph↗
arXiv1999

Tensor polarization of vector mesons from quark and gluon fragmentation

We considered the electro- and photoproduction of ρand other vector mesons with moderately large transverse momentum in the scattering of unpolarized electrons on unpolarized nucleons and nuclei. For these processes we have analyzed how to extract the novel fragmentation functions \bar b_1^q(z), \bar b_1^G(z), describing tensor polarization, and the photon double spin-flip distribution Δ^γfrom the angular distribution of meson decay products.

hep-ph↗
arXiv1998

Bremsstrahlung of a Quark Propagating through a Nucleus

The density of gluons produced in the central rapidity region of a heavy ion collision is poorly known. We investigate the influence of the effects of quantum coherence on the transverse momentum distribution of photons and gluons radiated by a quark propagating through nuclear matter. We describe the case that the radiation time substantially exceeds the nuclear radius (the relevant case for RHIC and LHC energies), which is different from what is known as Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal effect corresponding to an infinite medium. We find suppression of the radiation spectrum at small transverse photon/gluon momentum k_T, but enhancement for k_T>1GeV. Any nuclear effects vanish for k_T > 10GeV. Our results allow also to calculate the k_T dependent nuclear effects in prompt photon, light and heavy (Drell-Yan) dilepton and hadron production.

hep-ph↗
arXiv1998

Polarized rho mesons and the asymmetry between Delta d^bar(x) and Delta u^bar(x) in the sea of the nucleon

We present a calculation of the polarized rho meson cloud in a nucleon using time-ordered perturbation theory in two different variants advocated in the literature. We calculate the induced difference between the distributions Delta d^bar(x) and Delta u^bar(x). We use a recent lattice calculation to motivate an ansatz for the polarized valence quark distribution of the rho meson. Our calculations show that the two theoretical approaches give vastly different results. We conclude that Delta d^bar(x) - Delta u^bar(x) can be of relevant size with important consequences for the combined fits of polarized distribution functions.

hep-ph↗
arXiv1998

Evolution Equations for Higher Moments of Angular Momentum Distributions

Based on a sumrule for the nucleon spin we expand quark and gluon orbital angular momentum operators and derive an evolution matrix for higher moments of the corresponding distributions. In combination with the spin-dependent DGLAP-matrix we find a complete set of spin and orbital angular momentum evolution equations.

hep-ph↗
arXiv1998

The Skyrme Model piNN Form Factor and the Sea Quark Distribution of the Nucleon

We calculate the sea quark distribution of the nucleon in a meson cloud model. The novel feature of our calculation is the implementation of a special piNN form factor recently obtained by Holzwarth and Machleidt. This form factor is hard for small and soft for large momentum transfers. We show that this feature leads to a substantial improvement.

hep-ph↗
arXiv1998

Two-loop effects in the evolution of non-forward distributions

We study the effects of next-to-leading order corrections on the evolution of the twist-two non-forward parton distribution functions in the flavour non-singlet sector. It is found that the deviation from leading order evolution is small for all values of the parton momentum fraction variable for moderately large values of the scale parameter.

hep-ph↗