Exclusive electroproduction of pion pairs

N. Warkentin, M. Diehl, D. Yu. Ivanov, A. Schafer

Published 2007-03-14Version 1

We investigate electroproduction of pion pairs on the nucleon in the framework of QCD factorization for hard exclusive processes. We extend previous analyses by taking the hard-scattering coefficients at next-to-leading order in $\alpha_s$. The dynamics of the produced pion pair is described by two-pion distribution amplitudes, for which we perform a detailed theoretical and phenomenological analysis. In particular, we obtain constraints on these quantities by comparing our results with measurements of angular observables that are sensitive to the interference between two-pion production in the isoscalar and isovector channels.