Sullivan Process near Threshold and the Pion Gravitational Form Factors
Yoshitaka Hatta (Physics Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA and RIKEN BNL Research Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA); Jakob Schoenleber (Physics Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA and RIKEN BNL Research Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA)
We propose a novel method to experimentally access the gravitational form factors of the charged pion through the Sullivan process in electron-proton scattering. We demonstrate that the cross sections of photoproduction and electroproduction near the respective thresholds are dominated by the gluon gravitational form factor of the pion to next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD. We predict cross sections for the Electron-Ion Collider and the Jefferson Lab experiments.