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C. Dilks

Publications and source records attributed to C. Dilks.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

First Measurement of Near-Threshold J/{\psi} Photoproduction on the Neutron

We report the first measurement of the total and t-differential cross sections for near-threshold J/$\psi$ photoproduction on the neutron, obtained with the CLAS12 detector at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. The measurements, performed using a liquid-deuterium target, also provide the incoherent total and t-differential cross sections on the bound proton, enabling the first direct comparison of near-threshold J/$\psi$ photoproduction on bound protons and neutrons. Interpreted within Vector Meson Dominance, holographic QCD, and GPD-based frameworks, the data allow for the investigation of the gluonic structure of bound nucleons. A comparison with free proton results reveals hints of modifications to the gluon structure of nucleons in the nuclear medium, within the assumptions of the extraction and on the underlying production mechanism. The comparison of bound neutron and bound proton cross sections provides new constraints on the near-threshold J/$\psi$ production mechanism, which is crucial in order to establish J/$\psi$ photoproduction as a probe of the nucleon's gluonic structure.

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arXiv2026

Multi-Differential DVCS Cross Section Measurement on the Proton in the Valence Region with CLAS12

We report the measurement of the four-fold differential cross section of deeply virtual Compton scattering (DVCS) on the proton using a longitudinally polarized 10.6 GeV CEBAF electron beam incident on a liquid-hydrogen target with the CLAS12 detector. The analysis provides 1312 data points, expanding the measured phase space in the valence quark region, 0.06 < $x_B$ < 0.58, 1.00 < $Q^2$ < 5.76 GeV$^2$, and 0.11 < $|t|$ < 1.00 GeV$^2$. DVCS cross section measurements directly constrain the real part of the DVCS amplitude through its interference with the Bethe-Heitler process, making them essential inputs to global extractions of the Compton Form Factors (CFFs), particularly the dominant CFF $H$. These data improve sensitivity to these observables and can contribute to future determinations of the proton's internal mechanical structure.

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arXiv2026

Measurements of $\gamma_v p \to \pi^+ \pi^- p'$ Cross Sections with the CLAS Detector for $Q^{2}$ from 2.0--5.0~GeV$^{2}$ and $W$ from 1.400--2.125~GeV

Observables in the electroproduction of the $\pi^+\pi^-p$ reaction channel off the proton that are sensitive to the polarization of the virtual photon are presented for the first time in addition to the extraction of the nine single-differential and fully integrated cross sections within the kinematics area of 2.0~GeV$^2 < Q^2 < 5.0$~GeV$^2$ and 1.400~GeV $< W < 2.125$~GeV measured with the CLAS detector in Hall B at Jefferson Lab. The extraction of the unpolarized cross sections has been considerably improved in comparison with previously published results from this same dataset, offering finer binning over the five-dimensional hadronic reaction phase space, and including essential advances in the acceptance evaluation by implementing a new technique to stabilize the cross section extraction and minimize the systematic uncertainty associated with the simulation statistics. These improvements are of particular importance for the extraction of the $\gamma_v p N^*$ electrocouplings from these data.

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arXiv2026

Measurement of the near-threshold J$/\psi$ photoproduction cross section with the CLAS12 experiment

We present measurements of the total and differential cross sections for near-threshold J/$\psi$ photoproduction obtained with the CLAS12 detector at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. The results are based on data collected during the Fall 2018 and Spring 2019 running periods, using electron beams with energies of 10.6 and 10.2 GeV, respectively, scattered off a liquid-hydrogen target. Near-threshold J$/\psi$ photoproduction offers a unique sensitivity to the strong interaction in the non-perturbative regime of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). The energy dependence of the cross section constrains the underlying J$/\psi$ production mechanisms, including multi-gluon exchange and potential baryonic excitations. Additionally, the $t$-dependence of the differential cross section can be related to the transverse spatial distribution of gluons in the proton, providing critical input for theoretical descriptions of the gluonic structure of the proton. An interpretation of the results in terms of the gluon content of the proton is presented, providing new experimental constraints on QCD-inspired models of the proton structure and the role of gluonic degrees of freedom in hadronic mass generation.

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arXiv2026

Measurements of Beam Spin Asymmetries of $\pi^\pm\pi^0$ dihadrons at CLAS12

A first measurement of beam spin asymmetries for $\pi^+\pi^0$ and $\pi^-\pi^0$ pairs in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering is reported. The asymmetries in the dihadron angular distributions were measured from the scattering of a 10.6 GeV longitudinally polarized electron beam off a proton target, using the CLAS12 detector at Jefferson Lab. A photon classifier using a Gradient Boosted Trees (GBTs) architecture was trained with Monte Carlo simulations to reduce the amount of false combinatorial background $\pi^0$s, increasing statistics by up to five-fold compared to previous CLAS12 $\pi^0$ analyses. A nonzero $\sin\phi_{R_\perp}$ asymmetry is observed. This measurement is sensitive to the underexplored collinear twist-3 PDF $e(x)$, which encodes quark-gluon correlations in the proton, and presents a new avenue for its point-by-point extraction. The asymmetries also provide the first experimental evidence for the isospin-dependence of the helicity-dependent dihadron fragmentation function $G_1^\perp$, revealed by a sign-difference between the $\pi^+\pi^0$ and $\pi^-\pi^0$ channels in the $\sin(\phi_h-\phi_{R_\perp})$ modulation. In contrast, a large, same-sign enhancement near the $\rho$ mass for the $\sin(2\phi_h-2\phi_{R_\perp})$ modulation is observed, matching spectator model predictions in $\pi^+\pi^-$ pairs.

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arXiv2026

Frascati 22 GeV Workshop Summary

This document summarizes the outcomes of the "Science at the Luminosity Frontier: Jefferson Lab at 22 GeV" workshop, held at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati in December 2024. The primary goal of the workshop was to critically assess and refine the scientific case for a proposed energy upgrade of the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) to 22 GeV. This document intends to capture the progress on developing the scientific case since the publication of a lengthy "White Paper" in summer 2024 signed by about 450 authors.

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arXiv2025

Recoil Polarization in $K^+Y$ Electroproduction in the Nucleon Resonance Region with CLAS12

Hyperon recoil polarization measurements for the exclusive electroproduction of $K^+\Lambda$ and $K^+\Sigma^0$ final states from an unpolarized proton target have been carried out using the CLAS12 spectrometer at Jefferson Laboratory. The measurements at beam energies of 6.535~GeV and 7.546~GeV span the range of four-momentum transfer $Q^2$ from 0.3 to 4.5~GeV$^2$ and invariant mass $W$ from 1.6 to 2.4~GeV, while covering the full center-of-mass angular range of the $K^+$. These new $\Lambda$ polarization observables extend the existing data in a similar kinematic range but from a significantly larger dataset. However, they represent the first electroproduction measurements of this observable for the $\Sigma^0$. These data will allow for better exploration of the reaction mechanism in strangeness production, for further understanding of the spectrum and structure of excited nucleon states that couple to $KY$, and for improved insight into the strong interaction in the non-perturbative domain.

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arXiv2025

Multidimensional Measurements of Beam Single Spin Asymmetries in Semi-inclusive Deep-inelastic Charged Kaon Electroproduction off Protons in the Valence Region

Measurements of beam single spin asymmetries in semi-inclusive deep inelastic electron scattering (SIDIS) with positively charged kaons off protons have been performed with 10.6 and 10.2 GeV incident electron beams using the CLAS12 spectrometer at Jefferson Lab. We report an analysis of the electroproduction of positively charged kaons over a large kinematic range of fractional energy, Bjorken $x$, transverse momentum, and photon virtualities $Q^2$ ranging from 1 GeV$^2$ up to 6 GeV$^2$. This is the first published multi-dimensionally binned CLAS12 measurement of a kaon SIDIS single spin asymmetry in the valence quark regime. The data provide constraints on the structure function ratio $F_{LU}^{\sin{\phi}}/F_{UU}$, where $F_{LU}^{\sin{\phi}}$ is a quantity with a leading twist of twist-3 that can reveal novel aspects of the quark-gluon correlations within the nucleon. The impact of the data on understanding the underlying reaction mechanisms and their kinematic variation is explored using theoretical models for the different contributing twist-3 parton distribution functions (PDFs) and fragmentation functions (FFs).

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arXiv2025

Inclusive Electron Scattering in the Resonance Region off a Hydrogen Target with CLAS12

Inclusive electron scattering cross sections off a hydrogen target at a beam energy of 10.6 GeV have been measured with data collected from the CLAS12 spectrometer at Jefferson Laboratory. These first absolute cross sections from CLAS12 cover a wide kinematic area in invariant mass W of the final state hadrons from the pion threshold up to 2.5 GeV for each bin in virtual photon four-momentum transfer squared $Q^2$ from 2.55 to 10.4~GeV$^2$ owing to the large scattering angle acceptance of the CLAS12 detector. Comparison of the cross sections with the resonant contributions computed from the CLAS results on the nucleon resonance electroexcitation amplitudes has demonstrated a promising opportunity to extend the information on their $Q^2$ evolution up to 10 GeV$^2$. Together these results from CLAS and CLAS12 offer good prospects for probing the nucleon parton distributions at large fractional parton momenta $x$ for $W$ < 2.5 GeV, while covering the range of distances where the transition from the strongly coupled to the perturbative regimes is expected.

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arXiv2024

First Measurement of Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering on the Neutron with Detection of the Active Neutron

Measuring Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering on the neutron is one of the necessary steps to understand the structure of the nucleon in terms of Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs). Neutron targets play a complementary role to transversely polarized proton targets in the determination of the GPD $E$. This poorly known and poorly constrained GPD is essential to obtain the contribution of the quarks' angular momentum to the spin of the nucleon. DVCS on the neutron was measured for the first time selecting the exclusive final state by detecting the neutron, using the Jefferson Lab longitudinally polarized electron beam, with energies up to 10.6 GeV, and the CLAS12 detector. The extracted beam-spin asymmetries, combined with DVCS observables measured on the proton, allow a clean quark-flavor separation of the imaginary parts of the GPDs $H$ and $E$.

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arXiv2023

Beam Spin Asymmetry Measurements of Deeply Virtual $\pi^0$ Production with CLAS12

The new experimental measurements of beam spin asymmetry were performed for the deeply virtual exclusive $\pi^0$ production in a wide kinematic region with the photon virtualities $Q^2$ up to 8 GeV$^2$ and the Bjorken scaling variable $x_B$ in the valence regime. The data were collected by the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS12) at Jefferson Lab with longitudinally polarized 10.6 GeV electrons scattered on an unpolarized liquid-hydrogen target. Sizable asymmetry values indicate a substantial contribution from transverse virtual photon amplitudes to the polarized structure functions.The interpretation of these measurements in terms of the Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs) demonstrates their sensitivity to the chiral-odd GPD $\bar E_T$, which contains information on quark transverse spin densities in unpolarized and polarized nucleons and provides access to the proton's transverse anomalous magnetic moment. Additionally, the data were compared to a theoretical model based on a Regge formalism that was extended to the high photon virtualities.

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arXiv2023

Simulation studies related to the particle identification by the forward and backward RICH detectors at Electron Ion Collider

The Electron-Ion collider (EIC) will be the ultimate facility to study the dynamics played by the colored quarks and gluons to the emergence of the global phenomenology of the nucleons and nuclei as described by Quantum Chromodynamics. The physics programs will greatly rely on efficient particle identification (PID) in both the forward and the backward regions. The forward and the backward RICHes of the EIC have to be able to cover wide acceptance and momentum ranges; in the forward region a dual radiator RICH (dRICH) is foreseen and in the backward region a proximity-focusing RICH can be foreseen to be employed. The geometry and the performance studies of the dRICH have been performed as prescribed in the EIC Yellow Report using the ATHENA software framework. This part of our work reports the effort following the call for EIC detector proposal the studies related to the forward and the backward RICHes performance. In the forward region, dRICH performance showed a pion-kaon separation from around 1 GeV/c to 50 GeV/c at a three sigma level; the proximity focusing RICH (pfRICH) foreseen for the backward region can reach three sigma separation up to 3 GeV/c for e/$\pi$ and up to 10 GeV/c for $\pi$/K mass hypothesis.

physics.ins-det↗
arXiv2022

First CLAS12 measurement of DVCS beam-spin asymmetries in the extended valence region

Deeply virtual Compton scattering (DVCS) allows one to probe Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs) describing the 3D structure of the nucleon. We report the first measurement of the DVCS beam-spin asymmetry using the CLAS12 spectrometer with a 10.2 and 10.6 GeV electron beam scattering from unpolarised protons. The results greatly extend the $Q^2$ and Bjorken-$x$ phase space beyond the existing data in the valence region and provide over 2000 new data points measured with unprecedented statistical uncertainty, setting new, tight constraints for future phenomenological studies.

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arXiv2022

Observation of azimuth-dependent suppression of hadron pairs in electron scattering off nuclei

We present the first measurement of di-hadron angular correlations in electron-nucleus scattering. The data were taken with the CLAS detector and a 5.0 GeV electron beam incident on deuterium, carbon, iron, and lead targets. Relative to deuterium, the nuclear yields of charged-pion pairs show a strong suppression for azimuthally opposite pairs, no suppression for azimuthally nearby pairs, and an enhancement of pairs with large invariant mass. These effects grow with increased nuclear size. The data are qualitatively described by the GiBUU model, which suggests that hadrons form near the nuclear surface and undergo multiple-scattering in nuclei. These results show that angular correlation studies can open a new way to elucidate how hadrons form and interact inside nuclei

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arXiv2022

First observation of correlations between spin and transverse momenta in back-to-back dihadron production at CLAS12

We report the first measurements of deep inelastic scattering spin-dependent azimuthal asymmetries in back-to-back dihadron electroproduction, where two hadrons are produced in opposite hemispheres along the z-axis in the center-of-mass frame, with the first hadron produced in the current-fragmentation region and the second in the target-fragmentation region. The data were taken with longitudinally polarized electron beams of 10.2 and 10.6 GeV incident on an unpolarized liquid-hydrogen target using the CLAS12 spectrometer at Jefferson Lab. Observed non-zero $\sinΔϕ$ modulations in $ep \rightarrow e'pπ^+X$ events, where $Δϕ$ is the difference of the azimuthal angles of the proton and pion in the virtual photon and target nucleon center-of-mass frame, indicate that correlations between the spin and transverse momenta of hadrons produced in the target- and current-fragmentation regions may be significant. The measured beam-spin asymmetries provide a first access in dihadron production to a previously unobserved leading-twist spin- and transverse-momentum-dependent fracture function. The fracture functions describe the hadronization of the target remnant after the hard scattering of a virtual photon off a quark in the target particle and provide a new avenue for studying nucleonic structure and hadronization.

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arXiv2022

Opportunities for precision QCD physics in hadronization at Belle II -- a snowmass whitepaper

This document presents a selection of QCD studies accessible to high-precision studies with hadronic final states in $e^+e^-$ collisions at Belle II. The exceptionally clean environment and the state-of-the-art capabilities of the Belle~II detector (including excellent particle identification and improved vertex reconstruction), coupled with an unprecedented data-set size, will make possible to carry out multiple valuable measurements of the strong interaction including hadronic contributions to the muon $(g-2)$ and the QCD coupling, as well as advanced studies of parton hadronization and dynamical quark mass generation.

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arXiv2022

Collision energy dependence of second-order off-diagonal and diagonal cumulants of net-charge, net-proton and net-kaon multiplicity distributions in Au+Au collisions

We report the first measurements of a complete second-order cumulant matrix of net-charge, net-proton, and net-kaon multiplicity distributions for the first phase of the beam energy scan program at RHIC. This includes the centrality and, for the first time, the pseudorapidity window dependence of both diagonal and off-diagonal cumulants in Au+Au collisions at \sNN~= 7.7-200 GeV. Within the available acceptance of $|η|<0.5$, the cumulants grow linearly with the pseudorapidity window. Relative to the corresponding measurements in peripheral collisions, the ratio of off-diagonal over diagonal cumulants in central collisions indicates an excess correlation between net-charge and net-kaon, as well as between net-charge and net-proton. The strength of such excess correlation increases with the collision energy. The correlation between net-proton and net-kaon multiplicity distributions is observed to be negative at \sNN~= 200 GeV and change to positive at the lowest collision energy. Model calculations based on non-thermal (UrQMD) and thermal (HRG) production of hadrons cannot explain the data. These measurements will help map the QCD phase diagram, constrain hadron resonance gas model calculations, and provide new insights on the energy dependence of baryon-strangeness correlations. An erratum has been added to address the issue of self-correlation in the previously considered efficiency correction for off-diagonal cumulant measurement. Previously considered unidentified (net-)charge correlation results ($σ^{11}_{Q,p}$ and $σ^{11}_{Q,k})$ are now replaced with identified (net-)charge correlation ($σ^{11}_{Q^{PID},p}$ and $σ^{11}_{Q^{PID},k}$)

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arXiv2022

Multidimensional, high precision measurements of beam single spin asymmetries in semi-inclusive $π^{+}$ electroproduction off protons in the valence region

High precision measurements of the polarized electron beam-spin asymmetry in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering (SIDIS) from the proton have been performed using a 10.6~GeV incident electron beam and the CLAS12 spectrometer at Jefferson Lab. We report here a high precision multidimensional study of single $π^{+}$ SIDIS data over a large kinematic range in Bjorken x, fractional energy and transverse momentum of the hadron as well as photon virtualities $Q^{2}$ ranging from $1-7\,$GeV$^{2}$. In particular, the structure function ratio $F^{\sinϕ}_{LU}/F_{UU}$ has been determined, where $F^{\sinϕ}_{LU}$ is a twist-3 quantity that can reveal novel aspects of emergent hadron mass and quark-gluon correlations within the nucleon. The data's impact on the evolving understanding of the underlying reaction mechanisms and their kinematic variation is explored using theoretical models for the different contributing transverse momentum dependent parton distribution functions.

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