Comments on the paper "Eliminating beam-induced depolarizing effects in the hydrogen jet target for high-precision proton beam polarimetry at the Electron-Ion Collider"
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: A critical review of the methodology used in F. Rathmann et al., Phys. Rev. Accel. Beams 29, 021001 (2026), to evaluate beam-induced depolarization of the Atomic Polarized Hydrogen Gas Jet (HJET) target at the Electron--Ion Collider (EIC) is presented. It is shown that several key assumptions underlying that analysis -- including the introduction of a photon emission threshold, the application of Fermi's Golden Rule to coherent hyperfine transitions, the interpretation of power broadening as a physical linewidth increase, and the treatment of spatial magnetic fields -- are either incorrect or internally inconsistent. As a consequence, the predicted large depolarization effects are demonstrated to be artifacts of the adopted methodology rather than genuine physical phenomena. A consistent quantum-mechanical treatment based on the time-dependent Schrödinger equation shows that beam-induced depolarization probabilities at the EIC are negligibly small.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Author: Poblaguev, Andrei
Institution: Brookhaven National Laboratory
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: U.S. Department of Energy
Award: G5765906131
OpenAlex ID: W7166821930