A new extraction of pion parton distributions in the statistical model

We present a new analysis to extract pion's parton distribution functions (PDFs) in the framework of the statistical model. Starting from the statistical model framework first developed for the spin-1/2 nucleon, we apply appropriate modifications taking into account the spin-0 nature of pion and the isospin and charge-conjugation symmetry properties. This results in a significant reduction of the number of parameters compared to a recent work to extract pion's PDFs. Using pi(-)-induced Drell-Yan data to determine the parameters of this statistical model approach, we show that a good description of these experimental data with Next-to-Leading order QCD calculations can be obtained. Good agreement between the calculations and the pi(+)/pi(-) Drell-Yan cross section ratio data, not included in the global fit, has confirmed the predictive power of these new pion PDFs. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Automated summary

A new analysis method is proposed to extract the pion's parton distribution functions using a statistical model framework, which reduces the number of parameters and considers the specific properties of the pion. By using Drell-Yan data induced by pi(-) to determine the parameters of the statistical model approach, good agreement with experimental data and predictive power of the new pion PDFs are confirmed.