Polarization phenomena in deuteron proton scattering: a useful tool for the study of nucleon resonances properties

The microscopic structure of the nucleon N and its excited states N* can be determined through the (elastic or inelastic) electromagnetic form factors. These form factors should help to understand the nature of the transition regime from soft physics of the confinement region to the hard physics of the perturbative QCD. The authors show that hadron induced reactions with isospin zero projectiles, could be an effective method for the study of the nucleon structure, in particular through the measurement of polarization observables. They analyzed the properties of the inclusive d + p reactions, with particular interest in the domain of nucleonic resonances excitation. The calculated cross section and polarization observables show that it is possible to disentangle the different reaction mechanisms (omega, sigma and eta exchange) and bring new information about the electromagnetic form factors of the deuteron as well as of the nucleonic resonances. Existing data on the tensor analyzing power are in agreement with the prediction based on the omega exchange model. (authors)