The instrumentation in Hall A at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility was designed to study electro-and photo-induced reactions at very high luminosity and good momentum and angular resolution for at least one of the reaction products. The central components of Hall A are two identical high resolution spectrometers, which allow the vertical drift chambers in the focal plane to provide a momentum resolution of better than 2 x 10(-4). A variety of Cherenkov counters, scintillators and lead-glass calorimeters provide excellent particle identification. The facility has been operated successfully at a luminosity well in excess of 10(38) CM-2 s(-1). The research program is aimed at a variety of subjects, including nucleon structure functions, nucleon form factors and properties of the nuclear medium. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

The 1 H e; e 0 n cross section was measured at four-momentum transfers of Q 2 1:60 and 2:45 GeV 2 at an invariant mass of the photon nucleon system of W 2:22 GeV. The charged pion form factor (F ) was extracted from the data by comparing the separated longitudinal pion electroproduction cross section to a Regge model prediction in which F is a free parameter. The results indicate that the pion form factor deviates from the charge-radius constrained monopole form at these values of Q 2 by one sigma, but is still far from its perturbative quantum chromodynamics prediction. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.192001 PACS numbers: 14.40.Aq, 11.55.Jy, 13.40.Gp, 25.30.Rw A fundamental challenge in nuclear physics is the description of hadrons in terms of the constituents of the underlying theory of strong interactions, quarks, and gluons. Properties such as the total charge and magnetic moments are well described in a constituent quark framework, which effectively takes into account quark-gluon interactions. However, charge and current distributions, which are more sensitive to the underlying dynamic processes, are not well described.Hadronic form factors provide important information about hadronic structure. The coupling of a virtual photon to structureless particles is completely determined by their charge and magnetic moments. However, for composite particles one must account for the internal structure, which is accomplished by momentum transfer dependent functions. Examples of these functions are the electromagnetic form factors, which describe the distribution of charge and current.One of the simplest hadronic systems available for study is the pion, whose valence structure is a bound state of a quark and an antiquark. The electromagnetic structure of a spinless particle such as the pion is parametrized by a single form factor. Asymptotically, the pion charge form factor, F , is given in perturbative quantum chromodynamics (pQCD) [1]:

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Separated longitudinal and transverse structure functions for the reaction 1 H͑e, e 0 p 1 ͒n were measured in the momentum transfer region Q 2 0.6 1.6 ͑GeV͞c͒ 2 at a value of the invariant mass W 1.95 GeV. New values for the pion charge form factor were extracted from the longitudinal cross section by using a recently developed Regge model. The results indicate that the pion form factor in this region is larger than previously assumed and is consistent with a monopole parametrization fitted to very low Q 2 elastic data. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.1713 The pion occupies an important place in the study of the quark-gluon structure of hadrons. This is exemplified by the many calculations that treat the pion as one of their prime examples [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. One of the reasons is that the valence structure of the pion, being ͗qq͘, is relatively simple. Hence it is expected that the value of the four-momentum transfer squared Q 2 , down to which a perturbative QCD (pQCD) approach to the pion structure can be applied, is lower than, e.g., for the nucleon. Furthermore, the asymptotic normalization of the pion wave function, in contrast to that of the nucleon, is known from the pion decay.The charge form factor of the pion, F p ͑Q 2 ͒, is an essential element of the structure of the pion. Its behavior at very low values of Q 2 , which is determined by the charge radius of the pion, has been determined up to Q 2 0.28 ͑GeV͞c͒ 2 from scattering high-energy pions from atomic electrons [9]. For the determination of the pion form factor at higher values of Q 2 one has to use high-energy electroproduction of pions on a nucleon, i.e., employ the 1 H͑e, e 0 p 1 ͒n reaction. For selected kinematical conditions this process can be described as quasielastic scattering of the electron from a virtual pion in the proton. In the t-pole approximation the longitudinal cross section s L is proportional to the square of the pion form factor. In this way the pion form factor has been studied for Q 2 values from 0.4 to 9.8 ͑GeV͞c͒ 2 at CEA͞Cornell [10] and for Q 2 0.7 ͑GeV͞c͒ 2 at DESY [11]. In the DESY experiment a longitudinal͞transverse (L͞T ) separation was performed by taking data at two values of the electron energy. In the experiments done at CEA͞Cornell this was done in a few cases only, and even 0031-9007͞01͞86(9)͞1713(4)$15.00

The charged pion form factor, F π (Q 2 ), is an important quantity that can be used to advance our knowledge of hadronic structure. However, the extraction of F π from data requires a model of the 1 H(e, e π + )n reaction and thus is inherently model dependent. Therefore, a detailed description of the extraction of the charged pion form factor from electroproduction data obtained recently at Jefferson Lab is presented, with particular focus given to the dominant uncertainties in this procedure. Results for F π are presented for Q 2 = 0.60-2.45 GeV 2 . Above Q 2 = 1.5 GeV 2 , the F π values are systematically below the monopole parametrization that describes the low Q 2 data used to determine the pion charge radius. The pion form factor can be calculated in a wide variety of theoretical approaches, and the experimental results are compared to a number of calculations. This comparison is helpful in understanding the role of soft versus hard contributions to hadronic structure in the intermediate Q

We have measured parity-violating asymmetries in elastic electron-proton scattering over the range of momentum transfers 0.12 < or =Q2 < or =1.0 GeV2. These asymmetries, arising from interference of the electromagnetic and neutral weak interactions, are sensitive to strange-quark contributions to the currents of the proton. The measurements were made at Jefferson Laboratory using a toroidal spectrometer to detect the recoiling protons from a liquid hydrogen target. The results indicate nonzero, Q2 dependent, strange-quark contributions and provide new information beyond that obtained in previous experiments.

The (e, e 0 p) reaction was studied on targets of C, Fe, and Au at momentum transfers squared Q 2 of 0.6, 1.3, 1.8, and 3.3 GeV 2 in a region of kinematics dominated by quasifree electron-proton scattering. Missing energy and missing momentum distributions are reasonably well described by plane wave impulse approximation calculations with Q 2 and A dependent corrections that measure the attenuation of the final state protons. [S0031-9007 (98) The (e, e 0 p) reaction with nearly free electron-proton kinematics (quasifree) has proven to be a valuable tool to study the propagation of nucleons in the nuclear medium [1][2][3]. The relatively weak interaction of the electron with the nucleus allows the electrons to penetrate the nuclear interior and knock out protons. These studies complement nucleon-induced measurements of proton propagation in nuclei which give more emphasis to the nuclear surface. This paper reports the first results of a systematic study of the quasifree knockout of protons of 300-1800 MeV kinetic energy from carbon, iron, and gold targets. This energy range includes the minimum of the nucleon-nucleon (N-N) total cross section, the rapid rise in this cross section with energy above the pion production threshold, and extends to the long plateau in the energy dependence of the N-N total cross section. These features of the N-N interaction would be expected to be reflected in the energy dependence of attenuation of protons as they pass 5072 0031-9007͞98͞80(23)͞5072(5)$15.00

We report on precision measurements of the elastic cross section for electron-proton scattering performed in Hall C at Jefferson Lab. The measurements were made at 28 distinct kinematic settings covering a range in momentum transfer of 0.4 < Q 2 < 5.5 (GeV/c) 2 . These measurements represent a significant contribution to the world's cross section data set in the Q 2 range where a large discrepancy currently exists between the ratio of electric to magnetic proton form factors extracted from previous cross section measurements and that recently measured via polarization transfer in Hall A at Jefferson Lab. This data set shows good agreement with previous cross section measurements, indicating that if a here-to-fore unknown systematic error does exist in the cross section measurements then it is intrinsic to all such measurements.