Spin Polarizabilities of the Nucleon from Polarized Low Energy Compton Scattering

Abstract

As guideline for forthcoming experiments, we present predictions from Chiral Effective Field Theory for polarized cross sections in low energy Compton scattering for photon energies below 170 MeV, both on the proton and on the neutron. Special interest is put on the role of the nucleon spin polarizabilities which can be examined especially well in polarized Compton scattering. We present a model-independent way to extract their energy dependence and static values from experiment, interpreting our findings also in terms of the low energy effective degrees of freedom inside the nucleon: The polarizabilities are dominated by chiral dynamics from the pion cloud, except for resonant multipoles, where contributions of the Delta(1232) resonance turn out to be crucial. We therefore include it as an explicit degree of freedom. We also identify some experimental settings which are particularly sensitive to the spin polarizabilities.