Pion Electromagnetic Form Factor in the KT Factorization Formulae

Abstract

Based on the light-cone (LC) framework and the kT factorization formalism, the transverse momentum effects and the different helicity components' contributions to the pion form factor Fπ(Q2) are recalculated. In particular, the contribution to the pion form factor from the higher helicity components (λ1 + λ2 = ±1), which come from the spin-space Wigner rotation, are analyzed in the soft and hard energy regions respectively. Our results show that the right power behavior of the hard contribution from the higher helicity components can only be obtained by fully keeping the kT dependence in the hard amplitude, and that the kT dependence in LC wavefunction affects the hard and soft contributions substantially. A model for the twist-3 wavefunction ψp(x,k⊥) of the pion has been constructed based on the moment calculation by applying the QCD sum rules, whose distribution amplitude has a better end-point behavior than that of the asymptotic one. With this model wavefunction, the twist-3 contributions including both the usual helicity components (λ1 + λ2 = 0) and the higher helicity components (λ1 + λ2 = ±1) to the pion form factor have been studied within the modified pQCD approach. Our results show that the twist-3 contribution drops fast and it becomes less than the twist-2 contribution at Q2~10GeV2. The higher helicity components in the twist-3 wavefunction will give an extra suppression to the pion form factor. When all the power contributions, which include higher order in αs, higher helicities, higher twists in DA and etc., have been taken into account, it is expected that the hard contributions will fit the present experimental data well at the energy region where pQCD is applicable.