Transverse target spin asymmetry in inclusive DIS with two-photon exchange

Abstract

We study the transverse target spin dependence of the cross section for inclusive electron-nucleon scattering with unpolarized beam. Such dependence is absent in the one-photon exchange approximation (Christ-Lee theorem) and arises only in higher orders of the QED expansion, from the interference of one-photon and absorptive two-photon exchange amplitudes as well as from real photon emission (bremsstrahlung). We demonstrate that the transverse spin-dependent two-photon exchange cross section is free of QED infrared and collinear divergences. We argue that in DIS kinematics the transverse spin dependence should be governed by a "parton-like" mechanism in which the two-photon exchange couples mainly to a single quark. We calculate the normal spin asymmetry in an approximation where the dominant contribution arises from quark helicity flip due to interactions with non-perturbative vacuum fields (constituent quark picture) and is proportional to the quark transversity distribution in the nucleon. Such helicity-flip processes are not significantly Sudakov-suppressed if the infrared scale for gluon emission in the photon-quark subprocess is of the order of the chiral symmetry breaking scale, mu_chiral^2 >> Lambda_QCD^2. We estimate the asymmetry in the kinematics of the planned Jefferson Lab Hall A experiment to be of the order 10^{-4}, with different sign for proton and neutron. We also comment on the spin dependence in the limit of soft high-energy scattering.

22 pages, 14 figures; uses revtex4

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• Two-photon exchange in elastic electron-pion scattering
• Lepton mass effects for beam-normal single-spin asymmetry in elastic muon-proton scattering
• Two photon exchange in elastic electron scattering off hadronic systems
• The transverse nucleon single-spin asymmetry for the semi-inclusive production of photons in lepton-nucleon scattering
• Transverse Nucleon Single-Spin Asymmetry for Single-Inclusive Hadron and Jet Production at NLO Accuracy
• The Dirac Form Factor Predicts the Pauli Form Factor in the Endpoint Model
• Double parton distributions of the proton from basis light-front quantization
• Effect of sea quarks on single-spin asymmetries $A_N^{W^{\pm }}$ in transversely polarized pp collisions at RHIC
• Target normal single-spin asymmetry in inclusive electron-nucleon scattering with two-photon exchange: Analysis using $1/N_c$ expansion
• Target normal single-spin asymmetry in inclusive electron-nucleon scattering in the 1/Nc expansion
• Quark Orbital Angular Momentum and Final State Interactions
• Transverse Target Single Spin Asymmetry in Elastic e-{\p} Scattering
• Quark-Photon-Quark Correlation and Transverse Target Single Spin Asymmetry in Inclusive DIS
• Fragmentation contributions to transverse nucleon spin observables in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering at NLO