The neutron magnetic form factor Gₘⁿ(Q²) from Quasi-Elastic inclusive scattering data on D and 4He

الأصل · EN

We analyze cross sections for Quasi-Elastic inclusive scattering of electrons on nuclei and show that the observed isolated peaks for relatively low Q² are unique for the lightest targets. Focusing in particular on D and ⁴He, we investigate in two ways to what measure the above peaks can be allocated to nucleon-elastic processes. We first compute approximate upper limits for the nucleon-inelastic background in the Quasi-Elastic region due to inclusive Δ excitation, and find those to be small. Far more precise is a semi-phenomenological approach, where the dominance of nucleon-elastic processes is translated into a set of stringent requirements. We show that those are very well fulfilled for recent D data, and to a somewhat lesser extent for older D and ⁴He data. With knowledge of Gₑ,ₘᵖ and information on Gₑⁿ, we then extract Gₘⁿ and find agreement with values obtained by alternative methods. We discuss the sensitivity of the extraction method and mention future applications.