arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to W. Weise.
We propose the (gamma,p) reaction as a means of producing possible quasi-bound states of omega mesons in nuclei. We use an effective Lagrangian, based on chiral SU(3) symmetry and vector meson dominance, in order to construct the omega-nuclear potential. The contribution of bound omega states is observable in the missing energy spectra of protons emitted in forward direction for several nuclei.
A systematic multiple scattering formalism for vector meson electroproduction from nuclei is developed, with emphasis on the formation, propagation and hadronization scales for quark-gluon fluctuations of the virtual high-energy photon. The theory is compared to HERMES measurements of rho electroproduction on 14N. The nuclear transparency as a function of the vector meson propagation length is well reproduced.
A fireball model with time evolution based on transport calculations is used to examine the dilepton emission rate of an ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collision. We assume a transition from hadronic matter to a quark-gluon plasma at a critical temperature T_C between 130-170 MeV. We include thermal corrections to the hadronic spectra below T_C and use perturbation theory above T_C. The sensitivity of the spectra with respect to the freeze-out temperature, the initial fireball temperature and the critical temperature is investigated.
A coordinate space description of shadowing in deep-inelastic lepton-nucleus scattering is presented. The picture in the laboratory frame is that of quark-gluon fluctuations of the high-energy virtual photon, propagating coherently over large light-cone distances in the nuclear medium. We discuss the detailed dependence of the coherence effects on the invariant mass of the fluctuation. We comment on the issue of possible saturation in the shadowing effects at very small Bjorken-$x$.
We extend our recent non-perturbative chiral SU(3) coupled channel approach to pion- and photon-induced $η$- and $K$-meson production off protons by including all strong and electromagnetic p-wave multipoles. We identify the p-wave amplitudes of the next-to-leading order SU(3) chiral meson-baryon Lagrangian with a coupled channel potential which is iterated to infinite orders in a separable Lippmann-Schwinger equation. Our approach to $η$- and $K$-photoproduction introduces no additional free parameters. By adjusting a few finite range parameters and the unknown parameters in the Lagrangian, we are able to simultaneously describe a very large amount of low-energy data. These include the total and differential cross sections of the $π$-induced reactions $π^- p \to ηn, K^0 Λ, K^0 Σ^0, K^+ Σ^-$ and $π^+ p \to K^+ Σ^+$ as well as those of photoproduction $γp \to ηp, K^+Λ, K^+ Σ^0, K^0 Σ^+$. The polarization observables measured in $η$- and $K$-photoproduction are particularly sensitive to interference terms between the s- and p-wave multipoles. The total cross section data are remarkably well reproduced in all channels. There remain, however, some open questions concerning details of angular distributions and polarization observables.
The gap Delta = 4 pi f_pi ~ 1.2 GeV of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking is introduced as a scale delineating resonance and continuum regions in the QCD spectral sum rules for vector mesons. Basic current algebra results are easily recovered, and accurate sum rules for the lower moments of the spectral distributions are derived. The in-medium scaling of vector meson masses finds a straightforward interpretation, at least in the narrow width limit.
We present a detailed analysis of resonance contributions in the context of higher twist effects in the moments of the proton spin structure function g_1. For each of these moments, it is found that there exists a characteristic Q^2 region in which (perturbative) higher twist corrections coexist with (non-perturbative) resonance contribution of comparable magnitude.
Several topics in hadron physics at different scales of resolution are discussed. First, deep-inelastic scattering from nucleons and nuclei is viewed in a light-cone coordinate space picture. Then the smooth transition from parton to hadron degrees of freedom is demonstrated by using a generalized Q^2-dependent polarizabilities of the nucleon. Turning to low energy QCD we summarize recent developments related to the role of strange quarks in Chiral SU(3) Dynamics, a non-perturbative coupled channel approach to hadronic processes. Finally we elaborate on a unification of QCD Sum Rules with aspects of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in the analysis of quark-antiquark excitations of the condensed QCD vacuum and in nuclear matter.
We discuss QCD sum rule constraints based on moments of vector meson spectral distributions in the vacuum and in a nuclear medium. Sum rules for the two lowest moments of these spectral distributions do not suffer from uncertainties related to QCD condensates of dimension higher than four. We exemplify these relations for the case of the omega meson and discuss the issue of in-medium mass shifts from this viewpoint.
We discuss the close relation between shadowing in deep-inelastic lepton-nucleus scattering and diffractive photo- and leptoproduction of hadrons from free nucleons. We show that the magnitude of nuclear shadowing at small Bjorken-x, as measured by the E665 and NMC collaborations, is directly related to HERA data on the amount of diffraction in the scattering from free nucleons.
Models based on chiral SU(3)_L \otimes SU(3)_R symmetry and vector meson dominance suggest an attractive potential for the $ω$-meson in a nuclear medium. We discuss the feasibility of producing nuclear bound states of $ω$-mesons using $(d,^3He)$ and pion induced reactions on selected nuclear targets.
In coordinate space, quark and gluon distributions of the nucleon are defined as correlation functions involving two field operators separated by a light-cone distance $y^+ = 2l$. We study the nuclear modifications of these distributions. The largest effect is a strong depletion of parton distributions (shadowing) at large longitudinal distances, which starts for all parton species at $l=2$ fm, i.e. at the average nucleon-nucleon separation in nuclei. On the other hand, the nuclear radius does not play a significant role. At $l \lsim 1$ fm, nuclear modifications of parton distributions are small. The intrinsic structure of individual nucleons is evidently not very much affected by nuclear binding. In particular, there is no evidence for a significant increase of the quark or gluon correlation length in bound nucleons.
We generalize the sum rules for the nucleon electric plus magnetic polarizability $Σ=α+β$ and for the nucleon spin-polarizability $γ$, to virtual photons with $Q^2>0$. The dominant low energy cross sections are represented in our calculation by one-pion-loop graphs of relativistic baryon chiral perturbation theory and the $Δ(1232)$-resonance excitation. For the proton we find good agreement of the calculated $Σ_p(Q^2)$ with empirical values obtained from integrating up electroproduction data for $Q^2<0.4 GeV^2$. The proton spin-polarizability $γ_p(Q^2)$ switches sign around $Q^2= 0.4 GeV^2$ and it joins smoothly the "partonic" curve, extracted from polarized deep-inelastic scattering, around $Q^2=0.7 GeV^2$. For the neutron our predictions of $Σ_n(Q^2)$ and $γ_n(Q^2)$ agree reasonably well at $Q^2=0$ with existing determinations. Upcoming (polarized) electroproduction experiments will be able to test the generalized polarizability sum rules investigated here.
We investigate polarized deuteron structure functions at small values of the Bjorken variable, x < 0.1. In this region contributions from the coherent interaction of diffractively excited hadronic states with both nucleons become important. A proper treatment of this process requires an extension of the Glauber-Gribov multiple scattering theory to include spin degrees of freedom. In the kinematic domain of current fixed target experiments we observe that shadowing effects in g_1d are approximately twice as large as for the unpolarized structure function F_2d. Furthermore at x < 0.1 the tensor structure function b_1 is found to receive significant contributions from coherent double scattering.
We evaluate, within one-loop chiral perturbation theory, the two-pion exchange diagrams with single and double delta-isobar excitation contributing to elastic NN-scattering. We find that virtual $Δ$-excitation processes (in the static limit) produce the correct amount of isoscalar central attraction as needed in the peripheral partial waves with $L\geq 3$. Furthermore we compute the two-loop diagrams involving the $ππ$-interaction (so-called correlated $2π$-exchange). Contrary to common believe these processes lead to negligibly small and repulsive corrections to the NN-potential. The exchange of vector mesons ($ρ, ω$) turns out to be important for the F-wave phase shifts above $T_{lab}=150$ MeV. Without adjustable parameters we are able to reproduce the empirical NN phase shifts up to 350 MeV for $L\geq 3$ and up to about (50--80) MeV for the D-waves. This is therefore the characteristic window in which the NN-interaction is basically governed by chiral symmetry. Not surprisingly, the lower partial waves require non-perturbative methods and additional short-distance parametrizations of the NN-dynamics.
Based on an effective Lagrangian which combines chiral SU(3) dynamics with vector meson dominance, we have developed a model for the forward vector meson-nucleon scattering amplitudes. We use this as an input to calculate the low energy part of the current-current correlation function in nuclear matter. For the isovector channel we find a significant enhancement of the in-medium spectral density below the $ρ$ resonance while the $ρ$ meson mass itself changes only slightly. The situation is different in the isoscalar channel, where the mass and peak position of the $ω$ meson move downward while its width increases moderately. For the $ϕ$ meson we find almost no mass shift, but the width of the peak increases significantly. We use these spectra as ``left hand side'' of in medium QCD sum rules and observe a remarkable degree of consistency with the operator product expansion ``right hand''side in all three channels. We point out, however, that these results cannot simply be interpreted, as commonly done, in terms of a universal rescaling of vector meson masses in matter. We also compare the resulting thermal dilepton rates of our model with CERES data. We find satisfactory agreement but we point out that the dilepton rates from completely uncorrelated quark-antiquark pairs also fit the data quite well. Considering the strongly attractive potential for the $ω$ together with its comparably small width, we discuss the possible formation of bound $ω$ states in nuclei. Using a Green's function approach we investigate the possibility of detecting these bound states in the $A(d, ^3He) $ pick-up reaction.
We investigate the structure of constituent quarks and study implications for quark distribution functions of hadrons. Constituent quarks are constructed by dressing bare quarks with Goldstone bosons using the chiral quark model. We calculate resulting corrections to the twist-2 structure functions $f_1(x)$, $g_1(x)$ and $h_1(x)$. The Goldstone boson fluctuations produce a flavor asymmetry of the quark distribution in the nucleon in agreement with experimental data. They also generate significant depolarization effects which reduce the fraction of the nucleon spin carried by quarks. Corrections to the transversity spin structure function $h_1(x)$ differ from those to $g_1(x)$, and in particular we find a large reduction (40%) of the $d$-quark tensor charge, which is consistent with recent lattice calculations. We also study the pion structure function and find the momentum fraction carried by the sea quarks in the pion to be considerably larger than that in the nucleon.
The vacuum spectrum of the $ϕ$-meson is characterized by its decay into $K{\bar K} $. Modifications of the $K {\bar K}$-loops in baryonic matter change this spectrum. We calculate these in-medium modifications taking both s- and p-wave kaon-nucleon interactions into account. We use results of the in-medium $K$ and $\bar K$ spectra determined previously from a coupled channel approach based on a chiral effective Lagrangian. Altogether we find a very small shift of the $ϕ$ meson mass, by less than 10 MeV at normal nuclear matter density $ρ_0$. The in-medium decay width of the $ϕ$ meson increases such that its life time at $ρ=ρ_0$ is reduced to less than 5 fm/c. It should therefore be possible to observe medium effects in reactions such as $π^- p \to ϕn$ in heavy nuclei, where the $ϕ$ meson can be produced with small momentum.