Studies of Hadronization Mechanisms using Pion Electroproduction in Deep Inelastic Scattering from Nuclei

Understand

Atomic nuclei can be used as spatial analyzers of the hadronization process in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering.

• The study of this process using fully-identified final state hadrons began with the HERMES program in the late 1990s, and is now continuing at Jefferson Lab.
• In the measurement described here, electrons and positive pions were measured from a 5 GeV electron beam incident on targets of liquid deuterium, C, Fe, and Pb using CLAS in Hall B.
• The broadening of the transverse momentum of positive pions has been studied in detail as a function of multiple kinematic variables, and interpreted in terms of the transport of the struck quark through the nuclear systems.