Extraction of the pion distribution amplitude from polarized muon pair production

Abstract

We consider the production of muon pairs from the scattering of pions on longitudinally polarized protons. We calculate the cross section and the single spin asymmetry for this process, taking into account pion bound state effects. We work in the kinematic region where the photon has a large longitudinal momentum fraction, which allows us to treat the bound state problem perturbatively. Our predictions are directly proportional to the pion distribution amplitude. A measurement of the polarized Drell-Yan cross section thus allows the determination of the shape of the pion distribution amplitude.

13 pages, using revtex, two figures added separately as one uuencoded Z-compressed file

References in corpus (4)

• The theory and phenomenology of polarized deep inelastic scattering
• Commensurate Scale Relations in Quantum Chromodynamics
• Angular Distributions in the Drell-Yan Process: A Closer Look at Higher Twist Effects
• Spin-dependent Parton Distributions from Polarized Structure Function Data

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Observation of a Single-Spin Azimuthal Asymmetry in Semi-Inclusive Pion Electro-Production
• Gauge invariance, causality and gluonic poles
• Probing the nucleon's transversity and the photon's distribution amplitude in lepton pair photoproduction
• Polarized and unpolarized $\mu$-pair meson-induced Drell--Yan production and the pion distribution amplitude
• The Pauli form factor of the quark induced by instantons
• New contributions to gluon poles in direct photon production
• Drell-Yan hadron tensor: contour gauge and gluon propagator
• Drell-Yan-like processes and duality