arXiv subjects

V. Punjabi

Publications and source records attributed to V. Punjabi.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A New Low $Q^2$ Measurement of the Proton's $g_1$ Spin Structure Function from Longitudinal & Transverse Polarized Data

The proton's spin structure has proven to be far more complicated than was originally believed, and has been the subject of a number of experimental investigations. %Early measurements of the proton's spin structure function $g_1$ showed that the proton does not solely derive its spin from the spins of its quarks, starting the `proton spin crisis'. Of particular interest are the spin structure functions $g_1$ and $g_2$, which can be used to generate moments to directly compare experimental results to Chiral Perturbation Theory and other theories of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). The proton's $g_1$ structure function has been the subject of two other recent low momentum transfer experiments, but there are currently no published low momentum transfer measurements which collected data on the proton structure functions using both a longitudinally-polarized and a transversely-polarized target at the same kinematics. In this paper, we present the longitudinally polarized results of the Jefferson Lab E08-027 experiment, along with linked moments which combine this new result with the previously published transversely-polarized data from the same experiment. These results provide a proton $g_1$ extraction measured with very high precision across the resonance region, and provide new information on the value of $g_1$ dependent sum rules and moments.

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arXiv2026

d(e,e'p) Studies of Exclusive Deuteron Electro-Disintegration

The d(e,e'p) cross section was measured at momentum transfers $Q^2 = $ 0.8, 2.1 and 3.5 $(GeV/c)^2$ covering a wide range of proton kinematics at each $Q^2$ setting that made it possible to study this reaction as a function of missing momentum as well as a function of the neutron laboratory recoil angle $\theta_{nq}$. Missing momentum distributions were determined for fixed values of $\theta_{nq}$ up to missing momenta of 0.65 $GeV/c$. For the two larger momentum transfer settings, the characteristics of the experimental momentum distributions confirm the theoretical prediction that final state interactions (FSI) contribute maximally around a $\theta_{nq} \sim 70^\circ$, while for $\theta_{nq} < 45^\circ$ FSI are significantly reduced. The data at reduced FSI settings were best reproduced by calculations using the CD-Bonn potential wave functions.

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arXiv2025

Measuring short-range correlations and quasi-elastic cross sections in A(e,e') at x>1 and modest Q$^2$

We present results from the Jefferson Lab E08-014 experiment, investigating short-range correlations (SRC) through measurements of inclusive quasi-elastic scattering from $^2$H, $^3$He, $^4$He, $^{12}$C, $^{40}$Ca, and $^{48}$Ca. The kinematics were selected to isolate scattering from SRCs, yielding a plateau in the A/$^2$H cross-section ratios due to the universal two-body structure of the 2N-SRCs in light and heavy nuclei. We observe approximate plateaus in the A/$^2$H ratios and provide the first extractions of the A/$^2$H ratio for $^{40}$Ca and $^{48}$Ca. We also examine the A/$^3$He ratio, aiming to identify three-nucleon SRCs (3N-SRCs). Following the approach for isolating 2N-SRCs, searching for 3N-SRC dominance involved measuring the A/$^3$He cross section ratio at modest-to-large $Q^2$ values and looking for a plateau ratios for $x \gtorder 2.5$. This was not observed in the data, and in fact increasing $Q^2$ values moved the data \textit{further away} from the predicted plateau. We show here that, when analyzed in terms of the struck nucleon's light-cone momentum, the data exhibited the expected trend, progressively approaching the predicted 3N-SRC plateau. These observations suggest that future measurements at higher energies may facilitate a definitive isolation and identification of 3N-SRCs.

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arXiv2025

Investigation of Medium Modifications to $^{12}$C Structure Functions in the Resonance Region

We present results from a high precision experimental study of the nuclear modification of the longitudinal ($F_L$) to transverse ($F_1$) structure function ratio for bound nucleons in the resonance region. The inclusive electron scattering cross sections were measured in Jefferson Lab Experimental Hall C on carbon and deuterium nuclei for a large range of kinematics, allowing for separations of the longitudinal and transverse structure functions to be performed at a range of four-momentum transfer values $0.5 \le Q^2 \le$ 3.75 GeV$^2$. In contrast to the significant body of measurements of the nuclear modification of the $F_2$ structure function in the deep inelastic scattering region, there is very little on $F_L$ and $R = F_L / 2xF_1$ in the region of the nucleon resonances. In this paper we present measurements of the nuclear effect on $R$ for $^{12}$C ($R_C$) relative to deuterium ($R_D$). These results indicate regions in which in $R_C>R_D$, requiring that the nuclear modifications be different in all three structure functions, $F_2$, $F_1$ and $F_L$.

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arXiv2024

A novel measurement of the neutron magnetic form factor from A=3 mirror nuclei

The electromagnetic form factors of the proton and neutron encode information on the spatial structure of their charge and magnetization distributions. While measurements of the proton are relatively straightforward, the lack of a free neutron target makes measurements of the neutron's electromagnetic structure more challenging and more sensitive to experimental or model-dependent uncertainties. Various experiments have attempted to extract the neutron form factors from scattering from the neutron in deuterium, with different techniques providing different, and sometimes large, systematic uncertainties. We present results from a novel measurement of the neutron magnetic form factor using quasielastic scattering from the mirror nuclei $^3$H and $^3$He, where the nuclear effects are larger than for deuterium but expected to largely cancel in the cross-section ratios. We extracted values of the neutron magnetic form factor for low-to-modest momentum transfer, $0.6<Q^2<2.9$ GeV$^2$, where existing measurements give inconsistent results. The precision and $Q^2$ range of this data allow for a better understanding of the current world's data, and suggest a path toward further improvement of our overall understanding of the neutron's magnetic form factor.

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arXiv2024

Inclusive studies of two- and three-nucleon short-range correlations in $^3$H and $^3$He

Inclusive electron scattering at carefully chosen kinematics can isolate scattering from the high-momentum nucleons in short-range correlations (SRCs). SRCs are produced by the hard, short-distance interactions of nucleons in the nucleus, and because the two-nucleon (2N) SRCs arise from the same N-N interaction in all nuclei, the cross section in the SRC-dominated regime is identical up to an overall scaling factor. This scaling behavior has been used to identify SRC dominance and to measure the contribution of SRCs in a wide range of nuclei. We examine this scaling behavior over a range of momentum transfers using new data on $^2$H, $^3$H, and $^3$He, and find an expanded scaling region compared to heavy nuclei. Motivated by this improved scaling, we examine the $^3$H and $^3$He data in kinematics where three-nucleon SRCs may play an important role. The data for the largest struck nucleon momenta are consistent with isolation of scattering from three-nucleon SRCs, and suggest that the very highest momentum nucleons in $^3$He have a nearly isospin-independent momentum configuration.

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arXiv2022

Revealing the short-range structure of the "mirror nuclei" $^3$H and $^3$He

When protons and neutrons (nucleons) are bound into atomic nuclei, they are close enough together to feel significant attraction, or repulsion, from the strong, short-distance part of the nucleon-nucleon interaction. These strong interactions lead to hard collisions between nucleons, generating pairs of highly-energetic nucleons referred to as short-range correlations (SRCs). SRCs are an important but relatively poorly understood part of nuclear structure and mapping out the strength and isospin structure (neutron-proton vs proton-proton pairs) of these virtual excitations is thus critical input for modeling a range of nuclear, particle, and astrophysics measurements. Hitherto measurements used two-nucleon knockout or ``triple-coincidence'' reactions to measure the relative contribution of np- and pp-SRCs by knocking out a proton from the SRC and detecting its partner nucleon (proton or neutron). These measurementsshow that SRCs are almost exclusively np pairs, but had limited statistics and required large model-dependent final-state interaction (FSI) corrections. We report on the first measurement using inclusive scattering from the mirror nuclei $^3$H and $^3$He to extract the np/pp ratio of SRCs in the A=3 system. We obtain a measure of the np/pp SRC ratio that is an order of magnitude more precise than previous experiments, and find a dramatic deviation from the near-total np dominance observed in heavy nuclei. This result implies an unexpected structure in the high-momentum wavefunction for $^3$He and $^3$H. Understanding these results will improve our understanding of the short-range part of the N-N interaction.

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arXiv2022

The Proton Spin Structure Function $g_2$ and Generalized Polarizabilities in the Strong QCD Regime

The strong interaction is not well understood at low energy, or for interactions with low momentum transfer $Q^2$, but one of the clearest insights we have comes from Chiral Perturbation Theory ($χ$PT). This effective treatment gives testable predictions for the nucleonic generalized polarizabilities -- fundamental quantities describing the nucleon's response to an external field. We have measured the proton's generalized spin polarizabilities in the region where $χ$PT is expected to be valid. Our results include the first ever data for the transverse-longitudinal spin polarizability $δ_{LT}$, and also extend the coverage of the polarizability $\bar{d_2}$ to very low $Q^2$ for the first time. These results were extracted from moments of the structure function $g_2$, a quantity which characterizes the internal spin structure of the proton. Our experiment ran at Jefferson Lab using a polarized electron beam and a polarized solid ammonia (NH$_3$) target. The $δ_{LT}$ polarizability has remained a challenging quantity for $χ$PT to reproduce, despite its reduced sensitivity to higher resonance contributions; recent competing calculations still disagree with each other and also diverge from the measured neutron data at very low $Q^2$. Our proton results provide discriminating power between existing calculations, and will help provide a better understanding of this strong QCD regime.

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arXiv2022

Probing for high momentum protons in $^4$He via the $^4He(e,e'p)X$ reaction

Experimental cross sections for the $^4He(e,e'p)X$ reaction up to a missing momentum of 0.632 GeV/$c$ at $x_B=1.24$ and $Q^2$=2(GeV/$c$)$^2$ are reported. The data are compared to Relativistic Distorted Wave Impulse Approximation(RDWIA) calculations for $^4He(e,e'p)^3H$ channel. Significantly more events in the triton mass region are measured for $p_{m}$$>$0.45 GeV/$c$ than are predicted by the theoretical model, suggesting that the effects of initial-state multi-nucleon correlations are stronger than expected by the RDWIA model.

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arXiv2021

Measurement of the EMC effect in light and heavy nuclei

Inclusive electron scattering from nuclear targets has been measured to extract the nuclear dependence of the inelastic cross section in Hall C at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator facility. Results are presented for 2H, 3He, 4He, 9B, 12C, 63Cu and 197Au at an incident electron beam energy of 5.77 GeV for a range of momentum transfer from Q^2 = 2 to 7 (GeV/c)^2. These data improve the precision of the existing measurements of the EMC effect in the nuclear targets at large x, and allow for more detailed examinations of the A dependence of the EMC effect.

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arXiv2021

Deeply virtual Compton scattering off the neutron

The three-dimensional structure of nucleons (protons and neutrons) is embedded in so-called generalized parton distributions, which are accessible from deeply virtual Compton scattering. In this process, a high energy electron is scattered off a nucleon by exchanging a virtual photon. Then, a highly-energetic real photon is emitted from one of the quarks inside the nucleon, which carries information on the quark's transverse position and longitudinal momentum. By measuring the cross-section of deeply virtual Compton scattering, Compton form factors related to the generalized parton distributions can be extracted. Here, we report the observation of unpolarized deeply virtual Compton scattering off a deuterium target. From the measured photon-electroproduction cross-sections, we have extracted the cross-section of a quasi-free neutron and a coherent deuteron. Due to the approximate isospin symmetry of quantum chromodynamics, we can determine the contributions from the different quark flavours to the helicity-conserved Compton form factors by combining our measurements with previous ones probing the proton's internal structure. These results advance our understanding of the description of the nucleon structure, which is important to solve the proton spin puzzle.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

The PRad Windowless Gas Flow Target

We report on a windowless, high-density, gas flow target at Jefferson Lab that was used to measure $r_p$, the root-mean-square charge radius of the proton. To our knowledge, this is the first such system used in a fixed-target experiment at a (non-storage ring) electron accelerator. The target achieved its design goal of an areal density of 2$\times$10$^{18}$ atoms/cm$^2$, with the gas uniformly distributed over the 4 cm length of the cell and less than 1% residual gas outside the cell. This design eliminated scattering from the end caps of the target cell, a problem endemic to previous measurements of the proton charge radius in electron scattering experiments, and permitted a precise, model-independent extraction of $r_p$ by reaching unprecedentedly low values of $Q^2$, the square of the electron's transfer of four-momentum to the proton.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2020

Novel observation of isospin structure of short-range correlations in calcium isotopes

Short Range Correlations (SRCs) have been identified as being responsible for the high momentum tail of the nucleon momentum distribution, n(k). Hard, short-range interactions of nucleon pairs generate the high momentum tail and imprint a universal character on n(k) for all nuclei at large momentum. Triple coincidence experiments have shown a strong dominance of np pairs, but these measurements involve large final state interactions. This paper presents the results from Jefferson Lab experiment E08014 which measured inclusive electron scattering cross-section from Ca isotopes. By comparing the inclusive cross section from 48Ca to 40Ca in a kinematic region dominated by SRCs we provide a new way to study the isospin structure of SRCs.

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arXiv2020

Probing few-body nuclear dynamics via 3H and 3He (e,e'p)pn cross-section measurements

We report the first measurement of the \eep three-body breakup reaction cross sections in helium-3 ($^3$He) and tritium ($^3$H) at large momentum transfer ($\langle Q^2 \rangle \approx 1.9$ (GeV/c)$^2$) and $x_B>1$ kinematics, where the cross section should be sensitive to quasielastic (QE) scattering from single nucleons. The data cover missing momenta $40 \le p_{miss} \le 500$ MeV/c that, in the QE limit with no rescattering, equals the initial momentum of the probed nucleon. The measured cross sections are compared with state-of-the-art ab-initio calculations. Overall good agreement, within $\pm20\%$, is observed between data and calculations for the full $p_{miss}$ range for $^3$H and for $100 \le p_{miss} \le 350$ MeV/c for $^3$He. Including the effects of rescattering of the outgoing nucleon improves agreement with the data at $p_{miss} > 250$ MeV/c and suggests contributions from charge-exchange (SCX) rescattering. The isoscalar sum of $^3$He plus $^3$H, which is largely insensitive to SCX, is described by calculations to within the accuracy of the data over the entire $p_{miss}$ range. This validates current models of the ground state of the three-nucleon system up to very high initial nucleon momenta of $500$ MeV/c.

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arXiv2020

Dispersive Corrections to the Born Approximation in Elastic Electron-Nucleus Scattering in the Intermediate Energy Regime

Measurements of elastic electron scattering data within the past decade have highlighted two-photon exchange contributions as a necessary ingredient in theoretical calculations to precisely evaluate hydrogen elastic scattering cross sections. This correction can modify the cross section at the few percent level. In contrast, dispersive effects can cause significantly larger changes from the Born approximation. The purpose of this experiment is to extract the carbon-12 elastic cross section around the first diffraction minimum, where the Born term contributions to the cross section are small to maximize the sensitivity to dispersive effects. The analysis uses the LEDEX data from the high resolution Jefferson Lab Hall A spectrometers to extract the cross sections near the first diffraction minimum of 12C at beam energies of 362 MeV and 685 MeV. The results are in very good agreement with previous world data, although with less precision. The average deviation from a static nuclear charge distribution expected from linear and quadratic fits indicate a 30.6% contribution of dispersive effects to the cross section at 1 GeV. The magnitude of the dispersive effects near the first diffraction minimum of 12C has been confirmed to be large with a strong energy dependence and could account for a large fraction of the magnitude for the observed quenching of the longitudinal nuclear response. These effects could also be important for nuclei radii extracted from parity-violating asymmetries measured near a diffraction minimum.

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arXiv2019

Exclusive $π^+$ electroproduction off the proton from low to high -t

Background: Measurements of exclusive meson production are a useful tool in the study of hadronic structure. In particular, one can discern the relevant degrees of freedom at different distance scales through these studies. Purpose: To study the transition between non-perturbative and perturbative Quantum Chromodyanmics as the square of four momentum transfer to the struck proton, -t, is increased. Method: Cross sections for the $^1$H(e,e'$π^+$)n reaction were measured over the -t range of 0.272 to 2.127 GeV$^2$ with limited azimuthal coverage at fixed beam energy of 4.709 GeV, Q$^2$ of 2.4 GeV$^2$ and W of 2.0 GeV at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) Hall C. Results: The -t dependence of the measured $π^+$ electroproduction cross section generally agrees with prior data from JLab Halls B and C. The data are consistent with a Regge amplitude based theoretical model, but show poor agreement with a Generalized Parton Distribution (GPD) based model. Conclusion: The agreement of cross sections with prior data implies small contribution from the interference terms, and the confirmation of the change in t-slopes between the low and high -t regions previously observed in photoproduction indicates the changing nature of the electroproduction reaction in our kinematic regime.

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arXiv2019

Unique Access to u-Channel Physics: Exclusive Backward-Angle Omega Meson Electroproduction

Backward-angle meson electroproduction above the resonance region, which was previously ignored, is anticipated to offer unique access to the three quark plus sea component of the nucleon wave function. In this letter, we present the first complete separation of the four electromagnetic structure functions above the resonance region in exclusive omega electroproduction off the proton, e + p -> e' + p + omega, at central Q^2 values of 1.60, 2.45 GeV^2 , at W = 2.21 GeV. The results of our pioneering -u ~ -u min study demonstrate the existence of a unanticipated backward-angle cross section peak and the feasibility of full L/T/LT/TT separations in this never explored kinematic territory. At Q^2 =2.45 GeV^2 , the observed dominance of sigma_T over sigma_L, is qualitatively consistent with the collinear QCD description in the near-backward regime, in which the scattering amplitude factorizes into a hard subprocess amplitude and baryon to meson transition distribution amplitudes (TDAs): universal non-perturbative objects only accessible through backward angle kinematics.

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arXiv2019

Comparing proton momentum distributions in $A=2$ and 3 nuclei via $^2$H $^3$H and $^3$He $(e, e'p)$ measurements

We report the first measurement of the $(e,e'p)$ reaction cross-section ratios for Helium-3 ($^3$He), Tritium ($^3$H), and Deuterium ($d$). The measurement covered a missing momentum range of $40 \le p_{miss} \le 550$ MeV$/c$, at large momentum transfer ($\langle Q^2 \rangle \approx 1.9$ (GeV$/c$)$^2$) and $x_B>1$, which minimized contributions from non quasi-elastic (QE) reaction mechanisms. The data is compared with plane-wave impulse approximation (PWIA) calculations using realistic spectral functions and momentum distributions. The measured and PWIA-calculated cross-section ratios for $^3$He$/d$ and $^3$H$/d$ extend to just above the typical nucleon Fermi-momentum ($k_F \approx 250$ MeV$/c$) and differ from each other by $\sim 20\%$, while for $^3$He/$^3$H they agree within the measurement accuracy of about 3\%. At momenta above $k_F$, the measured $^3$He/$^3$H ratios differ from the calculation by $20\% - 50\%$. Final state interaction (FSI) calculations using the generalized Eikonal Approximation indicate that FSI should change the $^3$He/$^3$H cross-section ratio for this measurement by less than 5\%. If these calculations are correct, then the differences at large missing momenta between the $^3$He/$^3$H experimental and calculated ratios could be due to the underlying $NN$ interaction, and thus could provide new constraints on the previously loosely-constrained short-distance parts of the $NN$ interaction.

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