Incoherent deeply virtual Compton scattering off 4He

Very recently, for the first time, the two channels of nuclear deeply virtual Compton scattering, the coherent and incoherent ones, have been separated by the CLAS collaboration at the Jefferson Laboratory, using a He-4 target. The incoherent channel, which can provide a tomographic view of the bound proton and shed light on its elusive parton structure, is thoroughly analyzed here in the impulse approximation. A convolution formula for the relevant nuclear cross sections in terms of those for the bound proton is derived. Novel scattering amplitudes for a bound moving nucleon have been obtained and used. A state-of-the-art nuclear spectral function, based on the Argonne-18 potential, exact in the two-body part, with the recoiling system in its ground state, and modelled in the remaining contribution, with the recoiling system in an excited state, has been used. Different parametrizations of the generalized parton distributions of the struck proton have been tested. A good overall agreement with the data for the beam spin asymmetry is obtained. It is found that the conventional nuclear effects predicted by the present approach are relevant in deeply virtual Compton scattering and in the competing Bethe-Heitler mechanism, but they cancel each other to a large extent in their ratio, to which the measured asymmetry is proportional. Besides, the calculated ratio of the beam spin asymmetry of the bound proton to that of the free one does not describe that estimated by the experimental collaboration. This points to possible interesting effects beyond the impulse approximation analysis presented here. It is therefore clearly demonstrated that the comparison of the results of a conventional realistic approach, as the one presented here, with future precise data, has the potential to expose quark and gluon effects in nuclei. Interesting perspectives for the next measurements at high luminosity facilities, such as JLab at 12 GeV and the future Electron Ion Collider, are addressed.