Experimental determination of the effective strong coupling constant

A. Deur, V. Burkert, J. P. Chen, W. Korsch

Published 2005-09-12, updated 2007-06-21Version 3

We present a first attempt to experimentally extract an effective strong coupling constant that we define to be a low Q2 extension of a previous definition by S. Brodsky et al. following an initial work of G. Grunberg. Using Jefferson Lab data and sum rules, we establish its Q2-behavior over the complete Q2-range. The result is compared to effective coupling constants inferred from different processes and to calculations based on Schwinger-Dyson equations, hadron spectroscopy or lattice QCD. Although the connection between the experimentally extracted effective coupling constants and the calculations is not established it is interesting to note that their behaviors are similar.