Trident electroproduction of muon pairs in deep-inelastic inclusive reactions. II. Helicity analysis

Abstract

In this paper we analyze the Compton-type amplitude for the process e+p→e+μ^-+μ⁺+"anything" with both the incident electron and the target proton polarized. For a known outgoing-electron and muon-pair polarization, the kinematics for the process is worked out in a form especially suitable for experimental analysis. The differential cross section is expressed in terms of four off-mass-shell Compton-scattering helicity cross sections. The helicity cross sections are further expressed in terms of the invariant structure functions for the above process. The difference between the cross sections for parallel and antiparallel configurations of the incident virtual photon is shown to be related to the matrix element of the commutator of the commutators of currents between nucleon states. Using light-cone arguments we relate this difference to the structure functions which can be obtained from electroproduction and neutrino-induced production experiments.