Nucleon Femtography from Exclusive Reactions

Abstract

Major breakthroughs over the last two decades have led us to access information on how the nucleon's mass, spin and mechanical properties are generated from its quark and gluon degrees of freedom. On one side, a theoretical framework has been developed which enables the extraction of 3D parton distributions from deeply virtual exclusive scattering experiments. On the other hand, the so called gravitomagnetic form factors parameterizing the QCD energy momentum tensor of the nucleon have been connected to the Mellin moments of the 3D parton distributions. Current efforts in both experiment and theory are being directed at using information from electron scattering experiments to map out and eventually visualize these 3D distributions as well as the mass, spin and mechanical properties of the nucleon and of spin 0, 1/2, and 1 nuclei. A new science of nucleon femtography is emerging where the 3D structure of the nucleon will be studied merging information from current and forthcoming data from various facilities including the future EIC and the new influx of data science, imaging, and visualization.