Pion Partonic Distributions in the Statistical Model from Pion-induced Drell-Yan and $J/\Psi$ Production Data

TL;DR

This paper develops a statistical model-based method to extract pion parton distribution functions by fitting to Drell-Yan and J/Ψ production data, improving understanding of pion structure and gluon content.

Contribution

It extends the statistical model from nucleons to pions and combines Drell-Yan and J/Ψ data for a more constrained pion PDF extraction.

Findings

New pion PDFs consistent with data

Improved gluon distribution determination

Comparison with existing PDFs shows good agreement

Abstract

We present a new analysis to extract pion parton distribution functions (PDFs) within the framework of the statistical model. Starting from the statistical model first developed for the spin-1/2 nucleon, we extend this model to describe the spin-0 pion. Based on a combined fit to both the pion-induced Drell-Yan data and the pion-induced $J/\Psi$ production data, a new set of pion PDFs has been obtained. The inclusion of the $J/\Psi$ production data in the combined fit has provided additional constraints for better determining the gluon distribution in the pion. We also compare the pion PDFs obtained in the statistical model with other existing pion PDFs.