PRECISION MEASUREMENT OF QUASI-ELASTIC TRANSVERSE AND LONGITUDINAL RESPONSE FUNCTIONS IN THE RANGE 0.55 GeV/cj <q <1.0 GeV/c

Abstract

The Coulomb Sum is defined by the quasi-elastic nucleon knock-out process and it is the integration of the longitudinal response function over the energy loss of the incident electron. The Coulomb sum goes to the total charge at large q. The existing measurements of the Coulomb Sum Rule show disagreement with the theoretical calculations for the medium and heavy nuclei. To find the reason behind the disagreement might answer the question of whether the properties of the nucleons are affected by the nuclear medium or not. In order to determine the Coulomb Sum in nuclei, a precision measurement of inclusive electron scattering in the quasi-elastic region was performed at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. Incident electrons with energies ranging from 0:4 GeV to 4 GeV scattered off 4He,12C,56Fe and 208Pb nuclei at four scattering angles (15;60;90;120) and scattered energies ranging from 0:1 GeV to 4 GeV. The Born cross sections were extracted for the Left High Resolution Spectrometer (LHRS) and the Right High Resolution Spectrometer 56Fe data. The Rosenbluth separation was performed to extract the transverse and longitudinal response functions at 650 MeV three-momentum transfer. The preliminary results of the longitudinal and transverse functions were extracted for 56Fe target at 650 MeV three-momentum transfer.