Akshit Mehta received the Outstanding Oral Presentation award at the American Physical Society 4 Corners Section (APS4CS) meeting for his talk titled "Coherent φ Meson Electroproduction off Helium-4 nuclei."
The conference was hosted at UNC in Greeley, Colorado on October 10–11, 2025.
ABSTRACT TITLE:
Coherent φ Meson Electroproduction off Helium-4 nuclei.
ABSTRACT BODY:
We report on preliminary studies of coherent φ meson electroproduction off helium-4 nuclei using data from the recently run ALERT experiment at Jefferson Lab. The experiment combines the large acceptance of the CLAS12 detector with the dedicated ALERT recoil detector, enabling detection of low-momentum nuclear fragments in coincidence with the scattered electron and produced mesons. Detector calibrations and reconstruction algorithms are currently being finalized, and the first pass of analysis is underway. Preliminary analysis on the coherent φ production channel will be presented, representing an important step toward the extraction of gluonic distributions in helium-4 nuclei through deeply virtual meson production and providing new opportunities to explore the role of gluons in nuclear structure.
