Speaker
Description
One of the central challenges in modern physics is to unravel hadronic structure, in particular how the observed properties of hadrons (i.e. mass and spin) emerge from the underlying dynamics of quarks and gluons governed by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). The pion ($\pi$-meson) is the lightest quark-bound state and provides a particularly sensitive probe of quark confinement, since its structure is directly connected to these fundamental QCD mechanisms. The pion electromagnetic form factor (F_{\pi}) is a key observable that encodes information about the internal structure of the pion. It can be accessed through exclusive pion electro-production in the reaction $p(e,e'\pi^+)n$, where the measured cross-sections depend on the polarization of the exchanged virtual photon. The Pion-LT experiment at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) in Newport News, Virginia, was designed to measure $F_{\pi}$ at high $Q^2$ over a broad kinematic range. The experiment uses a unique Rosenbluth longitudinal–transverse (LT) separation technique to determine the longitudinal and transverse cross-sections, $\sigma_L$ and $\sigma_T$, with high precision. The precision of the cross-section separation depends on the accurate determination of small systematic uncertainties, since $F_{\pi}$ is extracted from $\sigma_L$. In this talk, I will present preliminary results for LT-separated cross-sections at $Q^2$ = 3.85 $GeV^2$ measured using the Rosenbluth technique, on behalf of the PionLT Collaboration.
| Keyword-1 | Hadrons |
|---|---|
| Keyword-2 | QCD |
| Keyword-3 | Jefferson Lab |