Regge Poles in High-Energy Electron Scattering

Abstract

The possibility that the photon is described by a Regge trajectory is considered, and the effect of this assumption on the analysis of electron-pion, electron-nucleon, and electron-helium scattering is examined in some detail. Partial-wave projections for the various amplitudes are made in the annihilation channel, and a multiparticle unitarity condition is formally imposed by use of the N/D matrix formulation. Since the photon does not have a fixed spin of one, the spin matrix structure is considerably more complicated than in the conventional theory. The amplitudes are written in terms of the Regge poles corresponding to the photon, ρ-ω meson, etc., and the resulting cross sections are given in the interesting high-energy limit. In contrast to the usual analysis, where form factors depend only on the momentum transfer, we find a larger number of independent functions which depend on the energy as well, however, in a characteristic manner. That is, the essential change due to the Regge behavior of the photon is an over-all nonintegral power of the energy occurring in the cross section. The effect of this factor can be experimentally tested and this possibility is discussed.