Exclusive pion electroproduction and transversity

Abstract

In this talk it is reported on an analysis of hard exclusive pion electroproduction within the handbag approach. Particular emphasis is laid on single-spin asymmetries. It is argued that a recent HERMES measurement of asymmetries measured with a transversely polarized target clearly indicate the occurrence of strong contributions from transversely polarized photons. Within the handbag approach such gamma_T --> pion transitions are described by the transversity GPDs accompanied by a twist-3 pion wave function. It is shown that this approach leads to results on cross sections and single-spin asymmetries in fair agreement with experiment.

10 pages, 6 figures, using latex with ws-procs9x6.cls, invited presented at the workshop on Exclusive Reactions at High Momentum Transfer, Jefferson lab, May 2010