Quantifying the nucleon's pion cloud with transverse charge densities

TL;DR

This paper investigates the spatial distribution of the pion cloud around nucleons using transverse charge densities, revealing the dominance of the non-chiral core up to 2 fm and discussing how the chiral component can be experimentally probed.

Contribution

It introduces a model-independent method to analyze the pion cloud's spatial structure in nucleons via transverse densities and calculates the chiral large-distance component using dispersion relations.

Findings

Non-chiral core dominates up to ~2 fm

Chiral component accessible via low-Q^2 scattering

Partonic interpretation of the chiral component

Abstract

The transverse densities in a fast-moving nucleon offer a model-independent framework for analyzing the spatial structure of the pion cloud and its role in current matrix elements. We calculate the chiral large-distance component of the charge density using a dispersion representation of the form factor and discuss its partonic interpretation. The non-chiral core is dominant up to surprisingly large distances ~2 fm. The chiral component can be probed in precision low-Q^2 elastic eN scattering or in peripheral deep-inelastic processes which resolve its quark/gluon content.