We report the first measurement of the average of the electron-proton and positron-proton elastic scattering cross sections. This lepton charge-averaged cross section is insensitive to the leading ...effects of hard two-photon exchange, giving more robust access to the proton's electromagnetic form factors. The cross section was extracted from data taken by the OLYMPUS experiment at DESY, in which alternating stored electron and positron beams were scattered from a windowless gaseous hydrogen target. Elastic scattering events were identified from the coincident detection of the scattered lepton and recoil proton in a large-acceptance toroidal spectrometer. The luminosity was determined from the rates of Møller, Bhabha, and elastic scattering in forward electromagnetic calorimeters. The data provide some selectivity between existing form factor global fits and will provide valuable constraints to future fits.
The OLYMPUS Collaboration reports on a precision measurement of the positron-proton to electron-proton elastic cross section ratio, R_{2γ}, a direct measure of the contribution of hard two-photon ...exchange to the elastic cross section. In the OLYMPUS measurement, 2.01 GeV electron and positron beams were directed through a hydrogen gas target internal to the DORIS storage ring at DESY. A toroidal magnetic spectrometer instrumented with drift chambers and time-of-flight scintillators detected elastically scattered leptons in coincidence with recoiling protons over a scattering angle range of ≈20° to 80°. The relative luminosity between the two beam species was monitored using tracking telescopes of interleaved gas electron multiplier and multiwire proportional chamber detectors at 12°, as well as symmetric Møller or Bhabha calorimeters at 1.29°. A total integrated luminosity of 4.5 fb^{-1} was collected. In the extraction of R_{2γ}, radiative effects were taken into account using a Monte Carlo generator to simulate the convolutions of internal bremsstrahlung with experiment-specific conditions such as detector acceptance and reconstruction efficiency. The resulting values of R_{2γ}, presented here for a wide range of virtual photon polarization 0.456<ε<0.978, are smaller than some hadronic two-photon exchange calculations predict, but are in reasonable agreement with a subtracted dispersion model and a phenomenological fit to the form factor data.
We have searched for exclusive production of exotic charmonia in the reaction μ+N→μ+(J/ψπ+π−)π±N′ using COMPASS data collected with incoming muons of 160 GeV/c and 200 GeV/c momentum. In the J/ψπ+π− ...mass distribution we observe a signal with a statistical significance of 4.1 σ. Its mass and width are consistent with those of the X(3872). The shape of the π+π− mass distribution from the observed decay into J/ψπ+π− shows disagreement with previous observations for X(3872). The observed signal may be interpreted as a possible evidence of a new charmonium state. It could be associated with a neutral partner of X(3872) with C=−1 predicted by a tetraquark model. The product of cross section and branching fraction of the decay of the observed state into J/ψπ+π− is determined to be 71±28(stat)±39(syst) pb.
We have performed the most comprehensive resonance-model fit of π−π−π+ states using the results of our previously published partial-wave analysis (PWA) of a large data set of diffractive-dissociation ...events from the reaction π−+p→π−π−π++precoil with a 190 GeV/c pion beam. The PWA results, which were obtained in 100 bins of three-pion mass, 0.5<m3π<2.5 GeV/c2, and simultaneously in 11 bins of the reduced four-momentum transfer squared, 0.1<t′<1.0 (GeV/c)2, are subjected to a resonance-model fit using Breit-Wigner amplitudes to simultaneously describe a subset of 14 selected waves using 11 isovector light-meson states with JPC=0−+, 1++, 2++, 2−+, 4++, and spin-exotic 1−+ quantum numbers. The model contains the well-known resonances π(1800), a1(1260), a2(1320), π2(1670), π2(1880), and a4(2040). In addition, it includes the disputed π1(1600), the excited states a1(1640), a2(1700), and π2(2005), as well as the resonancelike a1(1420). We measure the resonance parameters mass and width of these objects by combining the information from the PWA results obtained in the 11 t′ bins. We extract the relative branching fractions of the ρ(770)π and f2(1270)π decays of a2(1320) and a4(2040), where the former one is measured for the first time. In a novel approach, we extract the t′ dependence of the intensity of the resonances and of their phases. The t′ dependence of the intensities of most resonances differs distinctly from the t′ dependence of the nonresonant components. For the first time, we determine the t′ dependence of the phases of the production amplitudes and confirm that the production mechanism of the Pomeron exchange is common to all resonances. We have performed extensive systematic studies on the model dependence and correlations of the measured physical parameters.
The COMPASS Collaboration experiment recently discovered a new isovector resonancelike signal with axial-vector quantum numbers, the a1( 1420 ) , decaying to f0( 980 ) π . With a mass too close to ...and a width smaller than the axial-vector ground state a1( 1260 ) , it was immediately interpreted as a new light exotic meson, similar to the X , Y , Z states in the hidden-charm sector. We show that a resonancelike signal fully matching the experimental data is produced by the decay of the a1( 1260 ) resonance into K∗( → K π ) ¯ K and subsequent rescattering through a triangle singularity into the coupled f0( 980 ) π channel. The amplitude for this process is calculated using a new approach based on dispersion relations. The triangle-singularity model is fitted to the partial-wave data of the COMPASS experiment. Despite having fewer parameters, this fit shows a slightly better quality than the one using a resonance hypothesis and thus eliminates the need for an additional resonance in order to describe the data. We thereby demonstrate for the first time in the light-meson sector that a resonancelike structure in the experimental data can be described by rescattering through a triangle singularity, providing evidence for a genuine three-body effect.
The inclusive double-spin asymmetry, A1p, has been measured at COMPASS in deep-inelastic polarised muon scattering off a large polarised NH3 target. The data, collected in the year 2007, cover the ...range Q2>1(GeV/c)2, 0.004<x<0.7 and improve the statistical precision of g1p(x) by a factor of two in the region x<0.02. The new proton asymmetries are combined with those previously published for the deuteron to extract the non-singlet spin-dependent structure function g1NS(x,Q2). The isovector quark density, Δq3(x,Q2), is evaluated from a NLO QCD fit of g1NS. The first moment of Δq3 is in good agreement with the value predicted by the Bjorken sum rule and corresponds to a ratio of the axial and vector coupling constants |gA/gV|=1.28±0.07(stat.)±0.10(syst.).
New results for the double spin asymmetry A(1)(p) and the proton longitudinal spin structure function g(1)(p) are presented. They were obtained by the COMPASS Collaboration using polarised 200 GeV ...muons scattered off a longitudinally polarised NH3 target. The data were collected in 2011 and complement those recorded in 2007 at 160 GeV, in particular at lower values of x. They improve the statistical precision of g(1)(p)(x) by about a factor of two in the region x less than or similar to 0.02. A next-to-leading order QCD fit to the g(1) world data is performed. It leads to a new determination of the quark spin contribution to the nucleon spin, Delta Sigma, ranging from 0.26 to 0.36, and to a re-evaluation of the first moment of g(1)(p). The uncertainty of Delta Sigma is mostly due to the large uncertainty in the present determinations of the gluon helicity distribution. A new evaluation of the Bjorken sum rule based on the COMPASS results for the non-singlet structure function g(1)(NS) (x, Q(2)) yields as ratio of the axial and vector coupling constants vertical bar gA/gV vertical bar = 1.22 +/- 0.05 (stat.) +/- 0.10 (syst.), which validates the sum rule to an accuracy of about 9%.
We present a determination of the gluon polarisation Δg/g in the nucleon, based on the longitudinal double-spin asymmetry of DIS events with Q2>1 (GeV/c)2 including a pair of large ...transverse-momentum hadrons in the final state. The data were obtained by the COMPASS experiment at CERN using a 160 GeV/c polarised muon beam scattering off a polarised LiD6 target. The gluon polarisation is evaluated by a Neural Network approach for three intervals of the gluon momentum fraction xg covering the range 0.04<xg<0.27. The values obtained at leading order in QCD do not show any significant dependence on xg. Their average is Δg/g=0.125±0.060 (stat.)±0.063 (syst.) at average xg=0.09 and a scale of μ2=3 (GeV/c)2.
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