Extraction of pion transverse momentum distributions from Drell-Yan data

Abstract

We map the distribution of unpolarized quarks inside a unpolarized pion as a function of the quark's transverse momentum, encoded in unpolarized transverse momentum distributions (TMDs). We extract the pion TMDs from available data of unpolarized pion-nucleus Drell--Yan processes, where the cross section is differential in the lepton-pair transverse momentum. In the cross section, pion TMDs are convoluted with nucleon TMDs that we consistently take from our previous studies. We obtain a fairly good agreement with data. We present also predictions for pion-nucleus scattering that is being measured by the COMPASS Collaboration.