Elastic and Resonance contributions to moments of the proton structure function F2

Abstract

We discuss the role of nucleon and its excited state poles in the twist expansion of the nucleon structure function moments. We find that the nucleon pole contribution was overestimated in previous analyses by a factor of two. Inclusion of this missing factor makes the duality appear for all moments at least down to Q2=1 GeV2. For resonance poles the time reversal invariance together with unitarity demand at least four of them in the forward Compton scattering amplitude. These poles as well as the elastic pole can be propagated separately through the standard Operator Product Expansion derivation for DIS. This part of the amplitude gives a coherent, positive, higher twist contribution, which can be singled out of the total and compared with the remaining one given mostly by threshold effects. A comparison of the estimated resonance contribution to the data on structure function moments allows to test large-Q2 behavior of proton-resonance transition form-factors.