Determination of the effective strong coupling constant alpha_{s,g_1}(Q^2) from CLAS spin structure function data

Abstract

We present a new extraction of the effective strong coupling constant \alpha_{s,g_1}(Q^2). The result agrees with a previous determination and extends the measurement of the low and high Q^2 behavior of \alpha_{s,g_1}(Q^2) that was previously deduced from sum rules. In particular, it experimentally verifies the lack of Q^2-dependence of \alpha_{s,g_1}(Q^2) in the low Q^2 limit. This fact is necessary for application of the AdS/CFT correspondence to QCD calculations. We provide a parameterization of \alpha_{s,g_1}(Q^2) thatcan equivalently be used to parameterize the Q^2-dependence of the generalized Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn and Bjorken sums.