Exclusive Pion-production and the Relation to Transversity

TL;DR

This paper explores exclusive neutral pion electroproduction as a method to access transversity and tensor charge, linking experimental observables to chiral odd distributions and Regge exchange mechanisms.

Contribution

It proposes a novel approach to extract transversity-related quantities from exclusive pion production, connecting hadronic and partonic descriptions.

Findings

Identifies C-parity odd and chiral odd quantum number contributions.

Links meson production amplitudes to C-odd Regge exchanges.

Relates helicity structure to chiral odd generalized parton distributions.

Abstract

Exclusive $\pi^0$ electroproduction from nucleons is suggested for extracting the tensor charge and other quantities related to transversity from experimental data. This process isolates C-parity odd and chiral odd combinations of t-channel exchange quantum numbers. In a hadronic picture it connects the meson production amplitudes to C-odd Regge exchanges with final state interactions. In a description based on partonic degrees of freedom, the helicity structure for this C-odd process relates to the quark helicity flip, or chiral odd generalized parton distributions.