Partonic structure of pi and rho mesons from data on hard (semi)exclusive production of two pions off nucleon

Abstract

We fitted the pi-pi mass distribution in the range 0.5 < mpipi < 1.1 GeV measured in hard exclusive positron-proton reactions at HERA by the form dictated by QCD at leading twist level. Extracted parameters are related to valence quark distribution in the pion, and to the pion and rho meson distribution amplitudes. We obtain, for the first time, a measurement of the second Gegenbauer coefficient of the rho meson distribution amplitude: $a_2^{(ρ)}= -0.10\pm 0.20 $ for a photon virtuality of <Q^2>=21.2 GeV^2.