Off-diagonal quark distribution functions of the pion within an effective single instanton approximation

TL;DR

This paper presents a relativistic quark model for the pion based on instanton effects, successfully calculating the pion form factor and nonforward parton distributions in agreement with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel instanton-based relativistic quark model for pion structure, incorporating vacuum effects and gauge invariance.

Findings

Model parameters derived from QCD vacuum condensates

Calculated pion form factor matches experimental data

Provides insights into off-diagonal quark distribution functions

Abstract

We develop a relativistic quark model for pion structure, which incorporates the non-trivial structure of the vacuum of Quantum Chromodynamics as modelled by instantons. Pions are boundstates of quarks and the strong quark-pion vertex is determined from an instanton induced effective lagrangian. The interaction of the constituents of the pion with the external electromagnetic field is introduced in gauge invariant form. The parameters of the model, i.e., effective instanton radius and constituent quark masses, are obtained from the vacuum expectation values of the lowest dimensional quark and gluon operators and the low-energy observables of the pion. We apply the formalism to the calculation of the pion form factor by means of the isovector nonforward parton distributions and find agreement with the experimental data.