Analytic pion form factor

Abstract

The pion electromagnetic form factor and two-pion production in electron-positron collisions are simultaneously fitted by a vector dominance model evolving to perturbative QCD at large momentum transfer. This model was previously successful in simultaneously fitting the nucleon electromagnetic form factors (spacelike region) and the electromagnetic production of nucleon-antinucleon pairs (timelike region). For this pion case dispersion relations are used to produce the analytic connection of the spacelike and timelike regions. The fit to all the data is good, especially for the newer sets of time-like data. The description of high-$q^2$ data, in the time-like region, requires one more meson with $\rho$ quantum numbers than listed in the 2014 Particle Data Group review.