Off-shell Generalized Parton Distributions of the Pion

Abstract

We analyze off-shell effects in the generalized parton distributions (GPDs) of the pion in the context of the Sullivan electroproduction process, as well as the corresponding half-off-shell electromagnetic and gravitational form factors. We illustrate our general results within a chiral quark model, where the off-shell effects show up at a significant level, indicating their contribution to uncertainties in the extraction of the GPDs from the future experimental data.