Factorization of Short- and Long-range Interactions in Charged Meson Production

TL;DR

This paper discusses the importance of meson production data in understanding nucleon structure, emphasizing the need to test the factorization of short- and long-range interactions at higher energies for detailed QCD imaging.

Contribution

It highlights the significance of factorization tests in meson production to improve understanding of nucleon structure and discusses future collider opportunities.

Findings

Higher energies enable better tests of reaction mechanisms.

Factorization is crucial for imaging quark distributions.

Future colliders can extend these studies.

Abstract

Meson production data play an important role in our understanding of nucleon structure. The combination of reaction channels is sensitive to gluon and charge and flavor non-singlet quark densities and has the potential to provide detailed images of the QCD quark structure of the nucleon. Quark imaging requires a good understanding of the reaction mechanism, and in particular rigorous tests of factorization of long- and short-distance physics. The higher energies after the Jefferson Lab 12 GeV upgrade provide ideal conditions for such studies, which are an essential prerequisite for studies of valence quark distributions. An electron-ion collider would allow to extend these studies to detailed imaging of sea quarks and gluons.