Inelastic diffraction and meson radii

Abstract

It is shown that meson radii can be extracted from diffractive scattering experiments of the type: $m+p\to m + X$, where p stands for the target proton, and m for the incident charged meson $\pi^+$, $\pi^-$, $K^+$, or $K^-$. The basis of the method used to perform this extraction is the QCD-based SOC-picture for inelastic diffraction in high-energy hadron-hadron and lepton-hadron collisions proposed in a recent Letter. The obtained results for pion and kaon charge radii are compared with those determined in meson form factor measurements.