Sum rule measurements of the spin-dependent compton amplitude (nucleon spin structure at Q{sup 2} = 0)

Abstract

Energy weighted integrals of the difference in helicity-dependent photo-production cross sections ({sigma}{sub {1/2}} - {sigma}{sub 3/2}) provide information on the nucleon`s Spin-dependent Polarizability ({gamma}), and on the spin-dependent part of the asymptotic forward Compton amplitude through the Drell-Hearn-Gerasimov (DHG) sum rule. (The latter forms the Q{sup 2}=0 limit of recent spin-asymmetry experiments in deep-inelastic lepton-scattering.) There are no direct measurements of {sigma}{sub {1/2}} or {sigma}{sub 3/2}, for either the proton or the neutron. Estimates from current {pi}-photo-production multipole analyses, particularly for the proton-neutron difference, are in good agreement with relativistic-l-loop Chiral calculations ({chi}PT) for {gamma} but predict large deviations from the DHG sum rule. Either (a) both the 2-loop corrections to the Spin-Polarizability are large and the existing multipoles are wrong, or (b) modifications to the Drell-Hearn-Gerasimov sum rule are required to fully describe the isospin structure of the nucleon. The helicity-dependent photo-reaction amplitudes, for both the proton and the neutron, will be measured at LEGS from pion-threshold to 470 MeV. In these double-polarization experiments, circularly polarized photons from LEGS will be used with SPHICE, a new frozen-spin target consisting of {rvec H} {center_dot} {rvec D} in the solid phase. Reaction channels will be identified in SASY, a large detector array covering about 80% of 4{pi}. A high degree of symmetry in both target and detector will be used to minimize systematic uncertainties.