Statistical approach of pion parton distributions from Drell-Yan process

TL;DR

This paper extends a quantum statistical method to determine pion parton distributions using Drell-Yan data, achieving good data description and comparing results with previous models.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of the statistical approach to pion structure, expanding previous proton-focused work to include pion parton distributions.

Findings

Good fit to Drell-Yan pion data

Parton distributions differ from nucleon structure

Comparison with earlier determinations shows consistency

Abstract

The quantum statistical approach proposed more than one decade ago was used to determine the parton distributions for the proton by considering a large set of accurate Deep Inelastic Scattering experimental results. We propose to extend this work to extract the parton distributions for the pion by using data on lepton pair production from various experiments. This global next-to-leading order QCD analysis leads to a good description of several Drell-Yan $\pi^- W$ data. The resulting parton distributions are compared with earlier determinations. We will also discuss the difference between nucleon and pion structure in the same approach.