First Exclusive Measurement of Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering off He 4: Toward the 3D Tomography of Nuclei

Hattawy, M.; Baltzell, N. A.; DuprÃ©, R.; Hafidi, K.; Stepanyan, S.; BÃ¼ltmann, S.; De Vita, R.; El Alaoui, A.; El Fassi, L.; Egiyan, H.; Girod, F. X.; Guidal, M.; Jenkins, D.; Liuti, S.; Perrin, Y.; Torayev, B.; Voutier, E.; Adhikari, K. P.; Adhikari, S.; Adikaram, D.; Akbar, Z.; Amaryan, M. J.; Anefalos Pereira, S.; Armstrong, Whitney R.; Avakian, H.; Ball, J.; Bashkanov, M.; Battaglieri, M.; Batourine, V.; Bedlinskiy, I.; Biselli, A. S.; Boiarinov, S.; Briscoe, W. J.; Brooks, W. K.; Burkert, V. D.; Thanh Cao, Frank; Carman, D. S.; Celentano, A.; Charles, G.; Chetry, T.; Ciullo, G.; Clark, L.; Colaneri, L.; Cole, P. L.; Contalbrigo, M.; Cortes, O.; Crede, V.; D'Angelo, A.; Dashyan, N.; De Sanctis, E.; Deur, A.; Djalali, C.; Elouadrhiri, L.; Eugenio, P.; Fedotov, G.; Fegan, S.; Fersch, R.; Filippi, A.; Fleming, J. A.; Forest, T. A.; Fradi, A.; GarÃ§on, M.; Gevorgyan, N.; Ghandilyan, Y.; Gilfoyle, G. P.; Giovanetti, K. L.; Gleason, C.; Gohn, W.; Golovatch, E.; Gothe, R. W.; Griffioen, K. A.; Guo, L.; Hakobyan, H.; Hanretty, C.; Harrison, N.; Heddle, D.; Hicks, K.; Holtrop, M.; Hughes, S. M.; Ireland, D. G.; Ishkhanov, B. S.; Isupov, E. L.; Jiang, H.; Joo, K.; Joosten, S.; Keller, D.; Khachatryan, G.; Khachatryan, M.; Khandaker, M.; Kim, A.; Kim, W.; Klein, A.; Klein, F. J.; Kubarovsky, V.; Kuhn, S. E.; Kuleshov, S. V.; Lanza, L.; Lenisa, P.; Livingston, K.; Lu, H. Y.; Macgregor, I. J. D.; Markov, N.; Mayer, M.; McCracken, M. E.; McKinnon, B.; Meyer, C. A.; Meziani, Z. E.; Mineeva, T.; Mirazita, M.; Mokeev, V.; Montgomery, R. A.; Moutarde, H.; Movsisyan, A.; Munoz Camacho, C.; Nadel-Turonski, P.; Net, L. A.; Niccolai, S.; Niculescu, G.; Niculescu, I.; Osipenko, M.; Ostrovidov, A. I.; Paolone, M.; Paremuzyan, R.; Park, K.; Pasyuk, E.; Phelps, E.; Phelps, W.; Pisano, S.; Pogorelko, O.; Price, J. W.; Prok, Y.; Protopopescu, D.; Ripani, M.; Ritchie, B. G.; Rizzo, A.; Rosner, G.; Rossi, P.; SabatiÃ©, F.; Salgado, C.; Schumacher, R. A.; Seder, E.; Sharabian, Y. G.; Simonyan, A.; Skorodumina, Iu.; Smith, G. D.; Sokhan, D.; Sparveris, N.; Strauch, S.; Taiuti, M.; Ungaro, M.; Voskanyan, H.; Walford, N. K.; Watts, D. P.; Wei, X.; Weinstein, L. B.; Wood, M. H.; Zachariou, N.; Zana, L.; Zhang, J.; Zhao, Z. W.

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.202004

We report on the first measurement of the beam-spin asymmetry in the exclusive process of coherent deeply virtual Compton scattering off a nucleus. The experiment uses the 6 GeV electron beam from the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) accelerator at Jefferson Lab incident on a pressurized He4 gaseous target placed in front of the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS). The scattered electron is detected by CLAS and the photon by a dedicated electromagnetic calorimeter at forward angles. To ensure the exclusivity of the process, a specially designed radial time projection chamber is used to detect the recoiling He4 nuclei. We measure beam-spin asymmetries larger than those observed on the free proton in the same kinematic domain. From these, we are able to extract, in a model-independent way, the real and imaginary parts of the only He4 Compton form factor, HA. This first measurement of coherent deeply virtual Compton scattering on the He4 nucleus, with a fully exclusive final state via nuclear recoil tagging, leads the way toward 3D imaging of the partonic structure of nuclei.