Pion Structure at High and Low Energies in Chiral Quark Models

The structure of hadrons is described well by the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model, which is a chiral effective quark theory of QCD. In this work we explore the electromagnetic structure of the pion and kaon using the three-flavor NJL model, including effects of confinement and a pion cloud at the quark level. In the calculation there is only one free parameter, which we take as the dressed light quark ($u$ and $d$) mass. In the regime where the dressed light quark mass is app...

In this work, we investigate the gluon distribution functions for the pion and kaon, in addition to the improved result of the valence-quark ones, in the gauge-invariant nonlocal chiral-quark model (NL$\chi$QM), in which the momentum dependence of the quark interactions is properly taken into account. We then analyze the gluon distribution functions, generated dynamically through the splitting functions in the DGLAP QCD evolution. By comparing with the recent lattice QCD resu...

We have performed global fits of $f_{\pi}$ and $m_{\pi}$, from a variety of RBC-UKQCD domain wall fermion ensembles, to $SU(2)$ partially quenched chiral perturbation theory at NNLO. We report values for 9 NLO and 8 linearly independent combinations of NNLO partially quenched low energy constants, which we compare to other lattice and phenomenological determinations. We discuss the convergence of the expansion and use our large set of low energy constants to make predictions ...

The relationship of the quark model to the known chiral properties of QCD is a longstanding problem in the interpretation of low energy QCD. In particular, how can the pion be viewed as both a collective Goldstone boson quasiparticle and as a valence quark antiquark bound state where universal hyperfine interactions govern spin splittings in the same way as in the heavy quark systems. We address this issue in a simplified model which; however, reproduces all features of QCD r...

The role of the quark condensate for the low energy structure of QCD is discussed in some detail. In particular, the dependence of M_pi on m_u and m_d and the low energy theorems for the pi-pi scattering amplitude are reviewed. The new data on Ke4 decay beautifully confirm the standard picture, according to which the quark condensate is the leading order parameter of the spontaneously broken chiral symmetry.

The relationship between mesonic correlations and quantum condensates in the quark matter phase diagram is explored within a quantum field theoretical approach of the Nambu and Jona-Lasinio (NJL) type. Mean-field values in the scalar meson and diquark channels are order parameters signalling the occurrence of quark condensates, entailing chiral symmetry breaking (chi SB) and color superconductivity (2SC) in quark matter. We investigate the spectral properties of scalar and ps...

We present an analysis of unpolarized Drell-Yan pair production in pion-nucleus scattering with a particular focus into the pion dynamics. The study consists in analyzing the effect of the partonic longitudinal and, especially, transverse distributions of the pion in a Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (NJL) framework, with Pauli-Villars regularization. In order to consistently take into account the QCD evolution effects, we have estimated the hadronic scale corresponding to the NJL model'...

We construct a chiral Lagrangian containing besides the usual pion field (pi) also its first radial excitation (pi'). The Lagrangian is derived by bosonization of a Nambu--Jona-Lasinio quark model with separable non-local interactions, with form factors corresponding to 3-dimensional ground and excited state wave functions. Chiral symmetry breaking is governed by the NJL gap equation. The effective Lagrangian for pi- and pi'-mesons shows the decoupling of the Goldstone pion a...

We study in various chiral models the pion charge radius, $\pi_{e3}$ form factor ratio, $\pi^\circ \to \gamma \gamma$ amplitude, charge pion polarizabilities, $\gamma\gamma \to \pi^\circ \pi^\circ$ amplitude at low energies and the $\pi\pi$ s-wave I = 0 scattering length. We find that a quark-level linear sigma-model approach (also being consistent with tree-level vector meson dominance) is quite compatible with all of the above data.

We explore the link between the chiral symmetry of QCD and the numerical results of the light-front quark model, analyzing both the two-point and three-point functions of the pion. Including the axial-vector coupling as well as the pseudoscalar coupling in the light-front quark model, we discuss the implication of the chiral anomaly in describing the pion decay constant, the pion-photon transition form factor and the electromagnetic form factor of the pion. In constraining th...