Local Two-Photon Couplings and the J=0 Fixed Pole in Real and Virtual Compton Scattering

Abstract

The local coupling of two photons to the fundamental quark currents of a hadron gives an energy-independent contribution to the Compton amplitude proportional to the charge squared of the struck quark, a contribution which has no analog in hadron scattering reactions. We show that this local contribution has a real phase and is universal, giving the same contribution for real or virtual Compton scattering for any photon virtuality and skewness at fixed momentum transfer squared t. The t-dependence of this J=0 fixed Regge pole is parameterized by a yet unmeasured even charge-conjugation form factor of the target nucleon. The t=0 limit gives an important constraint on the dependence of the nucleon mass on the quark mass through the Weisberger relation. We discuss how this 1/x form factor can be extracted from high energy deeply virtual Compton scattering and examine predictions given by models of the H generalized parton distribution.

20 pages, 15 figures