Information from leading neutrons at HERA

In principle, leading neutrons produced in photoproduction and deep-inelastic scattering at HERA have the potential to determine the pion structure function, the neutron absorptive cross section and the form of the pion flux. To explore this potential we compare theoretical predictions for the x(L) and p(t) spectra of leading neutrons and the Q(2) dependence of the cross section with the existing ZEUS data.