Virtual meson cloud of the nucleon and generalized parton distributions

Abstract

We present the general formalism required to derive generalized parton distributions within a convolution model where the bare nucleon is dressed by its virtual meson cloud. In the one-meson approximation the Fock states of the physical nucleon are expanded in a series involving a bare nucleon and two-particle, meson-baryon, states. The baryon is assumed here to be either a nucleon or a $\Delta$ described within the constituent quark model in terms of three valence quarks; correspondingly, the meson, assumed to be a pion, is described as a quark-antiquark pair. Explicit expressions for the unpolarized generalized parton distributions are obtained and evaluated in different kinematics.

Comments: 37 pages, 9 figures, minor corrections, and figure 3 replaced; version to appear in Phys. Rev. D