Speaker
Description
The recent measurements on exclusive backward-angle electroproduction of mesons from Jefferson Lab electron-proton fixed-target scattering experiments above the resonance region, hint on a new domain of applicability of QCD collinear factorization framework in the special u-channel kinematics regime. Within this kinematics, the collinear factorized description of hard exclusive meson electroproduction reactions involves a new class of non-perturbative quantities known as the nucleon-to-meson Transition Distribution Amplitudes (TDAs). These TDAs share common features both with generalized parton distributions (GPDs) and baryon distribution amplitudes (DAs) and encode valuable new information on hadronic structure. Thanks to the pioneering experimental efforts, the interest of studying hadron structure through u-channel meson production observables have grown significantly.
In this presentation, a brief overview of the theoretical status of the TDA framework will be given along with the experimental measurements from CLAS and CLAS12 that demonstrated its success; a later section will describe the future u-Channel opportunities associated with the upgrades to CLAS12 and CLAS24 program.
