Exclusive channels in deep inelastic lepton-nucleon scattering and the nature of gluons

Simple rules for one-meson electroproduction in non-diffractive reactions involving transversely polarized virtual photons are proposed. The rules predict the helicity structure of the amplitudes and, if confirmed experimentally, could be interpreted as reflecting the spin of the gluons. For vector gluons we predict, for instance, dominance ot total helicity flip zero amplitudes and absence of the interference term of right- and left-handed virtual photons, i.e. dsigmasub(T)/dt = 0. The model also predicts a great number of ratios of transverse cross sections, for instance dsigmasub(U)/dt(γ*p→π+n):dsigmasub(U)/dt(γ*n→π-p) = 4:1. (Auth.)