Measurement of the <sup>3</sup>He Spin Structure Functions in the Resonance Region: A Test of Quark-Hadron Duality on the Neutron

Abstract

One of the biggest challenges in the study of the nucleon structure is the understanding of the transition from partonic degrees of freedom to hadronic degrees of freedom. In 1970, Bloom and Gilman noticed that structure function data taken at SLAC in the resonance region average to the scaling curve of deep inelastic scattering (DIS). Early theoretical interpretations suggested that these two very different regimes can be linked under the condition that the quark-gluon and quark-quark interactions are suppressed. Substantial efforts are ongoing to investigate this phenomenon both experimentally and theoretically. Quark-hadron duality has been confirmed for the unpolarized structure function F2 of the proton and the deuteron using data from the experimental Hall C at Jefferson Lab (JLab). Indications of duality have been seen for the proton polarized structure function g1 and the virtual photon asymmetry A1 at JLab Hall B and HERMES. Because of the different resonance behavior, it is expected that the onset of duality for the neutron will happen at lower momentum transfer than for the proton. Now that precise spin structure data in the DIS region are available at large x, data in the resonance region are greatly needed in order to test duality in spin-dependent structure functions. The goal of experiment E01-012 was to provide such data on the neutron (3He) in the moderate momentum transfer (Q2) region, 1.0 < Q2 < 4.0 (GeV/c2), where duality is expected to hold. The experiment ran successfully in early 2003 at Jefferson Lab in Hall B. It was an inclusive measurement of longitudinally polarized electrons scattering from a longitudinally or transversely polarized 3He target. Asymmetries and cross section differences were measured in order to extract the 3He spin structure function g1 and virtual photon asymmetry A1 in the resonance region. A test of quark-hadron duality has then been performed for the 3He and neutron structure functions. The study of spin duality for the neutron will provide a better understanding of the mechanism of the strong interaction. Moreover, if duality is well understood, our resonance data will bring information on the high x region where theoretical predictions for A1 are drastically different.