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5 Nucleon form factors

The CM differential cross-section for is most conveniently expressed in terms of the Sachs form factors as

From this eq. and working above threshold, proton, neutron and other baryon form factors can, in principle, be extracted in an -machine. However, being far from the narrow resonance region, the cross-section is rather low and statitistics is hard to collect. Assuming the above mentioned equality of magnetic and electric Sachs form factors at threshold, early measurements have given information with large errors. Recently, more precise data have been produced and also the neutron form factor has been measured for the first time. These results are shown in Fig.(7)

 
Figure 7: The proton and neutron e.m. form factors as a function of .  

On the other hand, one has excellent data from elastic e N-scattering for . Here, both the and (or and ) form factors can be separately measured for both protons and neutrons, as well as for their isoscalar or isovector combinations. We don't discuss these results explicitly, being only of secondary interest for Daphne, but simply recall that a reasonable description of these data can be achieved by a ``universal" dipole fit

for .

The corresponding electric and magnetic charge radii are found to be in the range of , i.e., only moderately above the charge radii for charged pseudoscalars. Further details and references for nucleon form factors can be found in refs. [3] and [12]. Concerning the asymptotic behaviour expected from the quark counting rules [5], it coincides with the dipole formula .


Carlos E.Piedrafita