Measurement of Semi-Inclusive π ◦ Production as Validation of Factorization*

The neutral pion electroproduction reaction is an important tool in our study of hadron structure by semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering (SIDIS). The SU(3) wave function of π ◦ does not allow apparent use for flavor decomposition in up and down quarks in the valence quark region, as enabled by charged-pion SIDIS processes. Yet, this same underlying wave function allows excellent use for systematic studies, to validate the prospective SIDIS science output at a 12-GeV JLab.  SIDIS π ◦ electroproduction has interesting experimental advantages, the lack of diffractive ρ contributions, the lack of pole contributions and thus radiative tail contributions at large z, the reduced nucleon resonance contribution, and the proportionality to an average fragmentation function, all of which benefit the low-energy (x, z) factorization.  The combination of the magnetic spectrometer and the new Neutral Particle Spectrometer (NPS) is well suited for the precision cross section measurement and these anticipated cross sections will provide basic tests of the theoretical understanding of SIDIS in terms of factorized parton distributions and fragmentation functions. In this talk I will discuss the NPS RG1A Experiment which has recently run in Hall C at JLab and the SIDIS component of this data.