Electronic Thesis/Dissertation
 

Inelastic Compton Scattering on the Deuteron and Extraction of Neutron Polarizabilities

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The electric and magnetic dipole polarizabilities are fundamental quantities that parameterize the responses of the charge and current distributions inside the nucleon, respectively, to an external electromagnetic probe. In this project, we explore the electric (α_n) and magnetic (β_n) dipole polarizabilities of the neutron through inelastic Compton scattering on the deuteron. The neutron Impulse Approximation (IA), where the photon interacts only with the bound neutron and the spectator proton is at rest, is analyzed at the Compton-optimized neutron quasi-free peak (C-nqfp) -- a kinematic condition where the energy of the incoming photon is 200 < omega < 350 MeV and the scattering angle is theta >120 degrees -- in chiral effective field theory with dynamic Delta(1232). Under those conditions, corrections to the IA amplitude are negligible and the inelastic channel effectively becomes a weighted elastic Compton scattering off the quasi-free neutron. The neutron IA interaction at the C-nqfp is explored through one- and two-parameter fits of α_n - β_n using different subsets of the quasi-free neutron database. The fits are consistent with each other within uncertainties and our best value for α_n - β_n isα_n - β_n = 5.9 ±2.9 (stat)±3.6 (theory)The proton IA interaction is also analyzed through similar set of fits at the analogous C-pqfp. The quasi-free proton analysis investigates the reliability of the quasi-free nucleon kinematic approach for polarizability study.

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