Speaker
Description
We will present results on Spin Density Matrix Elements (SDMEs) measured in hard exclusivsive muoproduction of $\rho ^0$ and $\omega $ mesons on the proton at COMPASS using 160 GeV/$c$ polarised $\mu ^{+}$ and $\mu^{-}$ beams scattering off a liquid
hydrogen target. The measurements cover the range 5 GeV/$c^2$ $< W <$ 17 GeV/$c^2$, 1.0 (GeV/$c$)$^2$ $< Q^2 <$ 10.0 (GeV/$c$)$^2$ and 0.01 (GeV/$c$)$^2$ $< p_T^2 <$ 0.5 (GeV/$c$)$^2$. Here, $Q^2$ denotes the virtuality of exchanged photon, $W$ the mass of final hadronic system and $p_T$ the transverse momentum of the vector meson with respect to the virtual-photon direction. The measured non-zero SDMEs for transitions of transversely polarised virtual photons to longitudinally polarised vector mesons ($\gamma _{T} \rightarrow V_{L}$) indicate a considerable violation of $s$-channel helicity conservation. Additionally, for $\rho ^0$ production we observe a dominant contribution of natural-parity-exchange transitions and a small contribution of
unnatural-parity-exchange transitions observed only at small values of $W$. On the contrary,the contribution of unnatural-parity-exchange for $\omega $ production is significant. It decreases with increasing $W$, being still non-negligible at the largest $W$ values accessible at COMPASS. The results provide an important input for modelling Generalised Parton Distribution (GPDs). In particular, they may allow to evaluate in a model-dependent way the role of parton-helicity flip GPDs ("transversity GPDs") in exclusive $\rho ^0$ and $\omega $ production.
