Delineating the (Un)polarized Photon Content of the Nucleon

Abstract

We investigate the QED Compton process (both elastic and inelastic) in unpolarized and longitudinally polarized electron-proton scattering. The cross section can be expressed in terms of the equivalent photon distribution of the proton. We provide the necessary kinematical cuts to extract the photon content of the proton at HERMES and eRHIC. We point out that such a process can give valuable information on $g_1(x_B, Q^2)$ in the small $x_B$, broad $Q^2$ region at eRHIC and especially in the lower $Q^2$, medium $x_B$ region in fixed target experiments.