Ruling out Color Transparency in Quasielastic ^{12}C(e,e^{'}p) up to Q^{2} of 14.2 (GeV/c)^{2}

Perturbative QCD Core of Hadrons and Color Transparency Phenomena

In the current paper, we argue that the ground state of a hadron contains a significant perturbative quantum chromodynamics (pQCD) core as the result of color gauge invariance and the values of chiral and gluon vacuum condensates. The evaluation within the method of dispersion sum rules (DSR) of the vacuum matrix elements of the correlator of local currents with the proper quantum numbers leads to the value of the radius of the pQCD core of a nucleon of about 0.4–0.5 fm. The selection of the initial and final states allows to select processes in which the pQCD core of the projectile gives the dominant contribution to the process. It is explained that the transparency of nuclear matter for the propagation of a spatially small and color-neutral wave packet of quarks and gluons—a color transparency (CT) phenomenon—for a group of hard processes off nuclear targets can be derived in the form of the QCD factorization theorem accounting for the color screening phenomenon. Based on the success of the method of DSR, we argue that a pQCD core in a hadron wave function is surrounded by the layer consisting of quarks interacting with quark and gluon condensates. As a result, in the quasi-elastic processes e+A→e′+N+(A−1)∗, the quasi-Feynman mechanism could be dominating in a wide range of the momentum transfer squared, Q2. In this scenario, a virtual photon is absorbed by a single quark, which carries a large fraction of the momentum of the nucleon and dominates in a wide range of Q2. CT should reveal itself in these processes at extremely large Q2 as the consequence of the presence of the Sudakov form factors, which squeeze a nucleon.

Nuclear C(e, e′p) Transparencies in a Relativistic Glauber Model

In light of the recent Jefferson Laboratory (JLab) data for the nuclear 12C(e,e′p) transparencies, calculations, obtained in a relativistic multiple scattering Glauber approximation, are discussed. The shell-separated 12C transparencies are shown and it is concluded that the p-shell nucleons are 75% more transparent than the s-shell ones. The presented comparisons between the calculations made here and the current 12C(e,e′p) data show no clear indication for the onset of color transparency when implemented within the color diffusion model with standard parameters.

Onset of Color Transparency in Holographic Light-Front QCD

The color transparency (CT) of a hadron, propagating with reduced absorption in a nucleus, is a fundamental property of QCD (quantum chromodynamics) reflecting its internal structure and effective size when it is produced at high transverse momentum, Q. CT has been confirmed in many experiments, such as semi-exclusive hard electroproduction, eA→e′πX, for mesons produced at Q2>3GeV2. However, a recent JLab (Jefferson Laboratory) measurement for a proton electroproduced in carbon eC→e′pX, where X stands for the inclusive sum of all produced final states, fails to observe CT at Q2 up to 14.2 GeV2. In this paper, the onset of CT is determined by comparing the Q2-dependence of the hadronic cross sections for the initial formation of a small color-singlet configuration using the generalized parton distributions from holographic light-front QCD. A critical dependence on the hadron’s twist, τ, the number of hadron constituents, is found for the onset of CT, with no significant effects from the nuclear medium. This effect can explain the absence of proton CT in the present kinematic range of the JLab experiment. The proton is predicted to have a “two-stage” color transparency with the onset of CT differing for the spin-conserving (twist-3, τ=3) Dirac form factor with a higher onset in Q2 for the spin-flip Pauli (twist-4) form factor. In contrast, the neutron is predicted to have a “one-stage” color transparency with the onset at higher Q2 because of the dominance of its Pauli form factor. The model also predicts a strong dependence at low energies on the flavor of the quark current coupling to the hadron.

Color Transparency and Light-Front Holographic QCD

Color transparency, the reduction of initial-state or final-state interactions in coherent nuclear processes, is a natural prediction of QCD (quantum chromodynamics) provided that small-sized or point-like configurations (PLCs) are formed in high-momentum transfer, high-energy, semi-exclusive processes. I use the Frankfurt-Miller-Strikman criteria for the existence of PLCs to show that the wave functions of light-front holographic QCD, as currently formulated, do not contain a PLC.

The Status and Future of Color Transparency and Nuclear Filtering

Fourty years after its introduction, the phenomenon of color transparency remains a domain of controversial interpretations of experimental data. In this review, present evidence for or against color transparency manifestation in various exclusive hard scattering reactions is presented. The nuclear transparency experiments reveal whether short-distance processes dominate a scattering amplitude at some given kinematical point. We plead for a new round of nuclear transparency measurements in a variety of experimental set-ups, including near-forward exclusive reactions related to generalized parton distribution (GPD) physics and near-backward exclusive reactions related to transition distribution amplitudes (TDA) physics.

J-PARC Hadron Physics and Future Possibilities on Color Transparency

The Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) is a hadron-accelerator facility that aims to provide secondary beams of kaons, pions, neutrinos, muons, and others together with the primary proton beam for investigating a wide range of science projects. High-energy hadron physics can be studied by using high-momentum beams of unseparated hadrons, which are essentially pions, and also primary protons. In this report, possible experiments are explained on color transparency and generalized parton distributions (GPDs). These projects are complementary to lepton-scattering experiments at Jefferson Laboratory (JLab), COMPASS/AMBER, and future electron-ion colliders. Thank to hadron-beam energies up to 30 GeV, J-PARC is a unique facility to investigate the transition region from the hadron degrees of freedom to the quark-gluon degrees of freedom. It is suitable for finding mechanisms of the olor transparency. Such color-transparency studies are also valuable for clarifying the factorization of hadron production processes in extracting the GPDs from actual measurements. These studies will lead to the understanding of basic high-energy hadron interactions in nuclear medium and to clarifications on the origins of hadron spins, masses, and internal pressure mechanisms.

u-Channel Color Transparency Observables

The paper proposes to study the onset of color transparency in hard exclusive reactions in the backward regime. Guided by the encouraging Jefferson Laboratory (JLab) results on backward π and ω electroproduction data at moderate virtuality Q2, which may be interpreted as the signal of an early scaling regime, where the scattering amplitude factorizes in a hard coefficient function convoluted with nucleon to meson transition distribution amplitudes, the study shows that investigations of these channels on nuclear targets opens a new opportunity to test the appearance of nuclear color transparency for a fast-moving nucleon.

Hadronization and Color Transparency

In this paper, the earlier studies by us on the production of hadrons in a nuclear environment are reviewed. A string-breaking model for the initial production of hadrons and a quantum-kinetic Giessen-Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck (GiBUU) transport model are used to describe the final state interactions of the newly formed (pre)hadrons. The latter are determined both by the formation times and by the time-development of the hadron–hadron cross section. First, it is shown that only a linear time dependence is able to describe the available hadronizatin data. Then, the results are compared with detailed data from HERMES and Jefferson Laboratory (JLAB) experiments; a rather good agreement is reached for all reactions, studied without any tuning of parameters. Predictions of spectra for pions and kaons for JLAB experiments at 12 GeV are also repeated. Finally, the absence of color transparency (CT) effects in the recent experiment on proton transparencies in quasi-elastic (QE) scattering events on nuclei is discussed. We propose to look instead for CT effects on protons in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering (SIDIS) events.

Color Transparency in p¯A Reactions

Exclusive channels of antiproton annihilation on the bound nucleon are sensitive to mesonic interactions with the target residue. If the hard scale is present, then such interactions should be reduced due to color transparency (CT). In this paper, the d(p¯,π−π0)p reaction is discussed at a large center-of-mass angle. Predictions for the future PANDA (antiProton ANnihilations at DArmstadt) experiment at FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research, Germany) are given for nuclear transparency ratios calculated within the generalized eikonal approximation and the quantum diffusion model of CT.