Direct measurement of the pion valence quark momentum distribution, the pion light cone wave function squared

We present the first direct measurements of the pion valence quark momentum distribution which is related to the square of the pion light-cone wave function. The measurements were carried out using data on diffractive dissociation of 500 GeV/c

\pi^-

into di-jets from a platinum target at Fermilab experiment E791. The results show that the

|q\bar {q}>

light-cone asymptotic wave function, which was developed using perturbative QCD methods, describes the data well for

Q^2 \sim 10 ~{\rm (GeV/c)^2}

or more. We also measured the transverse momentum distribution of the diffractive di-jets.

pi- nucleus: interaction
platinum
diffraction: dissociation
jet: pair production
pi: structure function
quark: valence
quark: momentum spectrum
pi: wave function
wave function: light cone
transverse momentum: spectrum

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