Direct measurement of the pion valence-quark momentum distribution, the pion light-cone wave function squared

E M Aitala; S Amato; J C Anjos; J A Appel; D Ashery; S Banerjee; I Bediaga; G Blaylock; S B Bracker; P R Burchat; R A Burnstein; T Carter; H S Carvalho; N K Copty; L M Cremaldi; C Darling; K Denisenko; S Deval; A Fernandez; G F Fox; P Gagnon; S Gerzon; C Gobel; K Gounder; A M Halling; G Herrera; G Hurvits; C James; P A Kasper; S Kwan; D C Langs; J Leslie; J Lichtenstadt; B Lundberg; S MayTal-Beck; B Meadows; J R de Mello Neto; D Mihalcea; R H Milburn; J M de Miranda; A Napier; A Nguyen; A B d'Oliveira; K O'Shaughnessy; K C Peng; L P Perera; M V Purohit; B Quinn; S Radeztsky; A Rafatian; N W Reay; J J Reidy; A C dos Reis; H A Rubin; D A Sanders; A K Santha; A F Santoro; A J Schwartz; M Sheaff; R A Sidwell; A J Slaughter; M D Sokoloff; J Solano; N R Stanton; R J Stefanski; K Stenson; D J Summers; S Takach; K Thorne; A K Tripathi; S Watanabe; R Weiss-Babai; J Wiener; N Witchey; E Wolin; S M Yang; D Yi; S Yoshida; R Zaliznyak; C Zhang

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.4768

Direct measurement of the pion valence-quark momentum distribution, the pion light-cone wave function squared

Phys Rev Lett. 2001 May 21;86(21):4768-72. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.4768.

Authors

E M Aitala¹, S Amato, J C Anjos, J A Appel, D Ashery, S Banerjee, I Bediaga, G Blaylock, S B Bracker, P R Burchat, R A Burnstein, T Carter, H S Carvalho, N K Copty, L M Cremaldi, C Darling, K Denisenko, S Deval, A Fernandez, G F Fox, P Gagnon, S Gerzon, C Gobel, K Gounder, A M Halling, G Herrera, G Hurvits, C James, P A Kasper, S Kwan, D C Langs, J Leslie, J Lichtenstadt, B Lundberg, S MayTal-Beck, B Meadows, J R de Mello Neto, D Mihalcea, R H Milburn, J M de Miranda, A Napier, A Nguyen, A B d'Oliveira, K O'Shaughnessy, K C Peng, L P Perera, M V Purohit, B Quinn, S Radeztsky, A Rafatian, N W Reay, J J Reidy, A C dos Reis, H A Rubin, D A Sanders, A K Santha, A F Santoro, A J Schwartz, M Sheaff, R A Sidwell, A J Slaughter, M D Sokoloff, J Solano, N R Stanton, R J Stefanski, K Stenson, D J Summers, S Takach, K Thorne, A K Tripathi, S Watanabe, R Weiss-Babai, J Wiener, N Witchey, E Wolin, S M Yang, D Yi, S Yoshida, R Zaliznyak, C Zhang

Affiliation

¹ Centro Brasiliero de Pesquisas Físicas, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

PMID: 11384344
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.4768

Abstract

We present the first direct measurements of the pion valence-quark momentum distribution which is related to the square of the pion light-cone wave function. The measurements were carried out using data on diffractive dissociation of 500 GeV/c pi(-) into dijets from a platinum target at Fermilab experiment E791. The results show that the /q&q> light-cone asymptotic wave function describes the data well for Q2 approximately 10 (GeV/c)(2) or more. We also measured the transverse momentum distribution of the diffractive dijets.