Towards a Neural Network Determination of Charged Pion Fragmentation Functions

Abstract

I present a first determination of a set of collinear fragmentation functions of charged pions using the NNPDF methodology. The analysis is based on a wide set of single-inclusive electron-positron annihilation data, including recent measurements from $B$-factory experiments, and is performed up to next-to-next-to-leading order accuracy in perturbative quantum chromodynamics. I discuss the results of the fits, highlighting their quality in the description of the data, their stability upon the inclusion of higher-order corrections, and their comparison to other sets of fragmentation functions.