Exclusive Pion-production and the Relation to Transversity

Abstract

Exclusive $π^0$ electroproduction from nucleons is suggested for extracting the tensor charge and other quantities related to transversity from experimental data. This process isolates C-parity odd and chiral odd combinations of t-channel exchange quantum numbers. In a hadronic picture it connects the meson production amplitudes to C-odd Regge exchanges with final state interactions. In a description based on partonic degrees of freedom, the helicity structure for this C-odd process relates to the quark helicity flip, or chiral odd generalized parton distributions.

4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the Proceedings of the XVI International Workshop on Deep-Inelastic Scattering and Related Subjects (DIS 2008), 7-11 April 2008, University College London