Münster 2002 – scientific programme

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HK: Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 35: Plenary Session

HK 35.4: Plenary Talk

Thursday, March 14, 2002, 10:00–10:30, Plenarsaal

Compton Scattering off the Nucleon at MAMI Energies — •Stefan Scherer — Institut für Kernphysik, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, 55099 Mainz

In recent years, real and virtual Compton scattering off the nucleon have attracted considerable interest from both the experimental and theoretical side. Real Compton scattering gives access to the so-called electromagnetic polarizabilities containing the structure information beyond the global properties of the nucleon such as its charge, mass, and magnetic moment. These polarizabilities have an intuitive interpretation in terms of induced dipole moments and thus characterize the response of the constituents of the nucleon to a soft external stimulus. The use of virtual photons considerably increases the possibilities to investigate structure and dynamics of the target. The virtual Compton scattering reaction e⁻ p→ e⁻ p γ allows one to map out the local response to external fields and can be described in terms of generalized electromagnetic polarizabilities. We will discuss experimental results for the polarizabilities of the proton which have been obtained at the Mainz Microtron (MAMI) and compare them with theoretical predictions. A simple classical interpretation in terms of the induced electric and magnetic polarization densities is proposed.