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J/ψ-meson–nucleon scattering length from threshold photoproduction on light nuclei

Igor I. Strakovsky1,*, William J. Briscoe1, Philipp Gubler2, Jackson R. Pybus3, Axel Schmidt1, and Alexander Somov4

  • *Contact author: igor@gwu.edu
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Phys. Rev. C 113, 065201 – Published 4 June, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/ndmt-2brb

Abstract

The quality of recent Short-Range Correlations/Color-Transparency (SRC/CT) Collaboration J/ψ photoproduction data off a He4 target from Hall D at Jefferson Laboratory, combined with the feasibility of measuring the reaction close to the free-nucleon energy threshold, opens the door to using incoherent J/ψ photoproduction to explore a variety of interesting physics aspects. An example is the estimation of the J/ψp scattering length |αJ/ψp| on the bound proton, obtained using the vector meson dominance model. The new experiment E12–25–002, conducted by the SRC/CT Collaboration, was recently approved in Hall D with the GlueX spectrometer, which will significantly enhance the number of reconstructed J/ψ mesons. Using a plane-wave theoretical model to generate quasidata, we estimated that the experiment could achieve a result of |αJ/ψp|=3.08±0.45mfm. This value can be compared to an extraction based on the free proton data from the GlueX Collaboration, |αJ/ψp|=3.08±0.55mfm. A comparison between the two would provide an opportunity to evaluate the effects of medium modification in light nuclei.

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Phys. Rev. C 113, 065201– Published 4 June, 2026
  • Received 11 December 2025
  • Revised 25 February 2026
  • Accepted 28 April 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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