The NA61/SHINE experiment at the CERN SPS is performing a uniqe study of the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter by varying collision energy and nuclear mass number of colliding nuclei. In central Pb+Pb collisions the NA49 experiment found structures in the energy dependence of several observables in the CERN SPS energy range that had been predicted for the transition to a deconfined phase. New measurements of NA61/SHINE find intriguing similarities in p+p interactions for which no deconfinement transition is expected at SPS energies. Possible implications will be discussed.
Measurements are reported of the proton and deuteron spin structure functions g1 at beam energies of 29.1, 16.2, and 9.7 GeV and g2 at a beam energy of 29.1 GeV. The integrals of g1 over x have been evaluated at fixed Q**2 = 3 (GeV/c)**2 using the full data set. The Q**2 dependence of the ratio g1/F1 was studied and found to be small for Q**2 > 1 (GeV/c)**2. Within experimental precision the g2 data are well-described by the Wandzura-Wilczek twist-2 contribution. Twist-3 matrix elements were extracted and compared to theoretical predictions. The asymmetry A2 was measured and found to be significantly smaller than the positivity limit for both proton and deuteron targets. A2 for the proton is found to be positive and inconsistent with zero. Measurements of g1 in the resonance region show strong variations with x and Q**2, consistent with resonant amplitudes extracted from unpolarized data. These data allow us to study the Q**2 dependence of the first moments of g1 below the scaling region.
Detailed results of G1(DEUT)/F1(DEUT) for the DIS (W**2 > 4 GeV**2) region. Additional normalisation uncertainty 4.9%.
We measured the inclusive electron-proton cross section in the nucleon resonance region (W < 2.5 GeV) at momentum transfers Q**2 below 4.5 (GeV/c)**2 with the CLAS detector. The large acceptance of CLAS allowed for the first time the measurement of the cross section in a large, contiguous two-dimensional range of Q**2 and x, making it possible to perform an integration of the data at fixed Q**2 over the whole significant x-interval. From these data we extracted the structure function F2 and, by including other world data, we studied the Q**2 evolution of its moments, Mn(Q**2), in order to estimate higher twist contributions. The small statistical and systematic uncertainties of the CLAS data allow a precise extraction of the higher twists and demand significant improvements in theoretical predictions for a meaningful comparison with new experimental results.
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