Real and Virtual Compton Scattering at Low Energies

Abstract

These lectures give a pedagogical introduction to real and virtual Compton scattering at low energies. We will first discuss real Compton scattering off a point particle as well as a composite system in the framework of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. The concept of electromagnetic polarizabilities is introduced. We then address a description of the Compton-scattering tensor within quantum field theory with particular emphasis on the derivation of low-energy theorems. The importance of a consistent treatment of hadron structure in the use of electromagnetic vertices is stressed. Finally, the reader is introduced to the notion of generalized polarizabilities in the rapidly expanding field of virtual Compton scattering.

41 pages, RevTex file, 5 postscript figures, invited lectures at the 11th Indian-Summer School on Intermediate Energy Physics ``Mesons and Light Nuclei,'' Prague, Czech Republic, September 7 - 11, 1998, to appear in Czech J. Phys

References in corpus (14)

• Virtual Compton Scattering off the nucleon
• Low-Energy Compton Scattering of Polarized Photons on Polarized Nucleons
• Compton Scattering and the Spin Structure of the Nucleon at Low Energies
• Delta(1232) and the Polarizabilities of the Nucleon
• Structure analysis of the virtual Compton scattering amplitude at low energies
• A new evaluation of the Baldin sum rule
• Generalized Polarizabilities and the Chiral Structure of the Nucleon
• First Extraction of a Spin-Polarizability of the Proton
• Nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung: An example of the impossibility of measuring off-shell amplitudes
• Dispersion relations and the spin polarizabilities of the nucleon
• Low-energy and low-momentum representation of the virtual Compton scattering amplitude
• Generalized polarizabilities of the nucleon studied in the linear sigma model (II)
• On electromagnetic off-shell effects in proton-proton bremsstrahlung
• Nucleon generalized polarizabilities within a relativistic Constituent Quark Model

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Generalized dipole polarizabilities and the spatial structure of hadrons
• Hadron Polarizabilities
• Pion magnetic polarisability using the background field method
• Generalized polarizabilities of the proton in a constituent quark model revisited
• Generalized polarizabilities of the pion in chiral perturbation theory
• Pion Generalized Dipole Polarizabilities by Virtual Compton Scattering $\pi e\to \pi e\gamma$
• Compton Scattering off Pions and Electromagnetic Polarizabilities
• First Measurement of pi e -> pi e gamma Pion Virtual Compton Scattering
• Chiral effective field theories of the strong interactions