Virtual photons in the pion form factors and the energy-momentum tensor

Abstract

We evaluate the vector and scalar form factor of the pion in the presence of virtual photons at next-to-leading order in two-flavor chiral perturbation theory. We also consider the scalar and tensor pion form factors of the energy-momentum tensor. We find that the intrinsic electromagnetic corrections are of the expected size for the vector form factor and very small for the charged pion scalar form factor. Detector resolution independent photon corrections reduce the vector radius by about one percent. The scalar radius of the neutral pion is reduced by two percent by isospin-breaking contributions. We perform infrared regularization by considering electron-positron annihilation into pions and the decay of a light Higgs boson into a pion pair. We discuss the detector resolution dependent contributions to the various form factors and pion radii.