https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-016-4236-0
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
The longitudinal and transverse distributions of the pion wave function from the present experimental data on the pion–photon transition form factor
1
Department of Physics, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang, 453007, People’s Republic of China
2
Department of Physics, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 401331, People’s Republic of China
3
Institute of High Energy Physics and Theoretical Physics Center for Science Facilities, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, People’s Republic of China
* e-mail: zhongtao@htu.edu.cn
Received:
10
April
2016
Accepted:
28
June
2016
Published online:
12
July
2016
The low-energy and high-energy behavior of the pion–photon transition form factor 
are sensitive to the transverse and longitudinal distributions of the pion wave function, respectively. A careful study of shall thus provide helpful constraints on the properties of the pion wave function. In this paper, we present a combined analysis of the data on reported by the CELLO, the CLEO, the BABAR, and the BELLE Collaborations. It is performed by using the method of least squares. By using the combined measurements of the BELLE and CLEO Collaborations, the pion wave function longitudinal and transverse behavior can be fixed to a certain degree, i.e. we obtain 
GeV and 
for 
, where 
and B are two parameters of a convenient pion wave function model. It is noted that the distribution amplitude of such a pion wave function can mimic various longitudinal behaviors, as suggested in the literature under a proper choice of parameters. We observe that the CELLO, CLEO, and BELLE data are consistent with each other, all of which prefer the asymptotic-like distribution amplitude; while the BABAR data prefers a more broad distribution amplitude, such as the CZ-like one.
© The Author(s), 2016
