Generalized parton distributions at CLAS

The understanding of the hadron structure in terms of QCD degrees of freedom is one of the main challenges of hadron physics. Indeed, despite the large amount of theoretical and experimental activity devoted to the subject in the last years, a full comprehension of mesons and baryons in terms of quark and gluon fields is still lacking. In order to operate a more detailed investigation of the hadron structure, new quantities have been introduced ten years ago, the Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs), defined as bilocal, off-forward matrix elements of quark and gluon operators. From an experimental point of view, GPDs are accessible through two main processes: Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering (DVCS) and Deeply Virtual Meson Electroproduction (DVMP). Depending on the polarization degrees of freedom acting in the process (like, for example, the simultaneous presence of a polarization in the beam and in the target, or the usage of a polarized beam with an unpolarized target), various combinations of GPDs can be accessed. In the case of DVCS, for example, the measurement of the Single Spin Asymmetry of processes like View the MathML source - realized by using a longitudinally polarized target - gives access to a combination of the GDPs H and (tilde H). The CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS) installed in the Hall-B at JLab, is particularly suited for the extraction of these quantities. Its large acceptance implies a good capability in the reconstruction of exclusive final states, allowing the investigation of the aforementioned processes in a wide range of kinematics. In this presentation, an overview of the main GPD measurements performed by CLAS will be given. In particular, the first DVCS measurements realized both with unpolarized and polarized target, together with the measurements of some exclusive meson electroproduction processes, will be described.