Measuring the Neutral Pion Polarizability Proposal Submitted to PAC 48 Draft to GlueX Collaboration M.M. Ito∗1, D. Lawrence1, E.S. Smithy1, B. Zihlmann∗1, R. Miskimen∗3, I. Larin∗3, A. Austregesilo5, D. Hornidge6, and P. Martel7 1Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, Newport News, VA 3University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 5Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 6Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada 7Institute for Nuclear Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany March 6, 2020 Theoretical Support J. Goity, Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, Newport News, Virginia and Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia A. Aleksejevs, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Corner Brook, Canada S. Barkanova, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Corner Brook, Canada S. Gevorkyan, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia L. Dai, Hunan University, Changsha, Hunan, China ∗Spokesperson yContact and Spokesperson, email:
[email protected] Abstract This proposal presents our plan to make a precision measurement of the cross section for γγ π0π0 via the Primakoff effect using the GlueX detector in Hall D. ! The aim is to significantly improve the data in the low π0π0 invariant mass domain, which is essential for understanding the low-energy regime of Compton scattering on the π0. In particular, the aim is to obtain a first ever experimental determination of the neutral pion polarizability απ βπ, which is one of the important predictions of chiral − perturbation theory and a key test of chiral dynamics on the π0. Our goal is to measure σ(γγ π0π0) to a precision of about 6%, which would determine the combination of ! απ0 βπ0 to a precision of 50%.