Abstract
Measuring the pionic structure function is of high interest, as it provides a new area for understanding the strong interaction among quarks and testing QCD predictions. To this end, we investigate the feasibility and expected impact of a possible experiment at EicC (Electron-ion collider in China). We show the simulation results on the statistical precision of an EicC measurement, based on the model of leading neutron tagged DIS process and the parton distribution functions of the pion from JAM18 global analysis. The simulation shows that at EicC, the kinematics cover the range from 0.01 to 1, and the range from 1 to 50 GeV , within the acceptable statistical uncertainty. Assuming an integrated luminosity of 50 fb , in the low- region ( GeV ), the Monte Carlo data show that the suggested measurement in the whole range reaches very high precision ( %). To perform such an experiment, only the addition of a far-forward neutron calorimeter is needed.
Highlights
Pion, the lightest hadron made of the first-generation quark and antiquark, plays a fundamental role in particle and nuclear physics, as the long-range nuclear force carrier which binds the nucleons together into a nucleus [1]
We show the simulation results on the statistical precision of an electron-ion collider in China (EicC) measurement, based on the model of leading neutron tagged deep inelastic scattering (DIS) process and the parton distribution functions of the pion from JAM18 global analysis
Recent progresses from Dyson-Schwinger equations (DSE), which is a nonperturbative quantum chromodynamics (QCD) approach, show that the dressed quark mass which comes from the dynamical chiral symmetry breaking [8,9,10] is greatly cancelled by the attraction interaction between the quark and the antiquark [4, 5, 11]
Summary
The lightest hadron made of the first-generation quark and antiquark, plays a fundamental role in particle and nuclear physics, as the long-range nuclear force carrier which binds the nucleons together into a nucleus [1] In theory, it is a good approximation of the Nambu-Goldstone boson [2, 3] from the spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking, the emergence of its small mass (much smaller than that of the proton) is not yet understood quantitatively and experimentally [4,5,6,7]. Measuring the pion valence quark distributions at large x using the LN-DIS technique, and comparing it with that from the Drell-Yan process will reinforce our understanding of the perturbative QCD theory on the dynamics when xπ approaches one. More experimental data on the pion structure in the future are very critical to constrain the sea quark and gluon distributions of the pion and to understand the model uncertainties in the global fit.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
