VIRTUAL COMPTON-SCATTERING AT HIGH-ENERGY

The virtual compton scattering (VCS) reaction (ep --> e'p'gamma) at hi gh energy will provide new information on the proton structure. The in variant momentum transfer (t = (q - q')(2)) dependence of high energy VCS is related to the flavor dependent vector and axial-vector form fa ctors of the the proton. Thus VCS can provide information that is comp lementary to parity violating electron scattering measurements. For sm all t and large Q(2), VCS generalizes the structure functions of deep inelastic lepton scattering. These generalized structure functions hav e a sum rule which yields the net contribution of quark spin and orbit al angular momentum to the proton spin. A large acceptance detector su ch as the MEMUS design, capable of running at a luminosity 10(35)/cm(2 )/sec at incident electron energies from 10 to 30 GeV can measure the VCS process in a broad and exciting kinematic range.