Probing the partonic structure of pentaquarks in hard electroproduction

Abstract

Exclusive electroproduction of a K or K* meson on the nucleon can give a Theta+ pentaquark in the final state. This reaction offers an opportunity to investigate the structure of pentaquark baryons at parton level. We discuss the generalized parton distributions for the N-->Theta+ transition and give the leading order amplitude for electroproduction in the Bjorken regime. Different production channels contain complementary information about the distribution of partons in a pentaquark compared with their distribution in the nucleon. Measurement of these processes may thus provide deeper insight into the very nature of pentaquarks.

Comments: 17 pages, 8 figures. v2: minor clarifications, references added