The Onset of Quark-Hadron Duality in Pion Electroproduction

Abstract

A large data set of charged-pion electroproduction from both hydrogen and deuterium targets has been obtained spanning the low-energy residual-mass region. These data conclusively show the onset of the quark-hadron duality phenomenon, as predicted for high-energy hadron electroproduction. We construct several ratios from these data to exhibit the relation of this phenomenon to the high-energy factorization ansatz of electron-quark scattering and subsequent quark-to- pion production mechanisms.

Comments: 11 pages, 3 figures, accepted in Phys. Rev. Lett. Tables added