Two Photon Exchange for Exclusive Pion Electroproduction

Abstract

We perform detailed calculations of two-photon-exchange QED corrections to the cross section of pion electroproduction. The results are obtained with and without the soft-photon approximation; analytic expressions for the radiative corrections are derived. The relative importance of the two-photon correction is analyzed for the kinematics of several experiments at Jefferson Lab. A significant, over 20%, effect due to two-photon exchange is predicted for the backward angles of electron scattering at large transferred momenta.