Pion Form Factor and Quark Mass Evolution in a Light-Front Bethe-Salpeter Model

Abstract

We discuss the soft contribution to the elastic pion form factor with the mass evolution from current to constituent quark being taken into account using a light-front Bethe-Salpeter (LFBS) model, which is a light-front quark model (LFQM) with a running mass. It is shown that partial conservation of the axial-vector current (PCAC) is satisfied with a running quark mass. We examine the sensitivity of the pion form factor using two different functional forms of the quark propagator. The Ball-Chiu ansatz is used to maintain local gauge invariance of the quark-photon vertex. The extension of our model to the hard contribution is also discussed.