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A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Physics, University of Regina. x, 102 p. ; Measurements of exclusive meson production are a useful tool in the study of hadronic structure. In particular, one can discern the relevant degrees of freedom at different distance scales through these studies. In the transition region between low momentum transfer (where a description of hadronic degrees of freedom in terms of effective hadronic Lagrangians is valid) and high momentum transfer (where the degrees of freedom are quarks and gluons), the predictive power of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of the strong interaction, is limited due to the absence of a complete solution. Thus, one has to rely upon experimental data from the non-perturbative intermediate-energy regime to thoroughly understand the onset of perturbative QCD (pQCD) as the momentum transfer is increased. This work involves two deep exclusive meson electroproduction experiments at Jefferson Lab (JLab). The p(e, e′π+)n reaction is studied at fixed Q2 and W of 2.5 GeV2 and 2.0 GeV, respectively, while varying the four momentum transfer to the nucleon −t from 0.2 to 2.1 GeV2. As −t is increased, the hadronic interaction scale is reduced independently of the observation scale of the virtual photon, providing valuable information about the hard- scattering process in general. The data was taken at JLab Hall C in 2003, as a part of the experiment E01-004, F -2, using the High Momentum Spectrometer (HMS) and Short Orbit Spectrometer (SOS), and in this work, the results of the differential cross section analysis are presented and compared to prior data, as well as two theoretical models. Using these results over a wide −t range, the transition from hard to soft QCD is also studied. In addition, the p(e, e′K+) ( 0) reactions are also studied. Despite their importance in elucidating the reaction mechanism underlying strangeness production, we still do ... |