Meson cloud effects on the pion quark distribution function in the chiral constituent quark model

Abstract

We investigate the valence quark distribution function of the pion ${v}^{\ensuremath{\pi}}(x,{Q}^{2})$ in the framework of the chiral constituent quark model and evaluate the meson cloud effects on ${v}^{\ensuremath{\pi}}(x,{Q}^{2})$. We explicitly demonstrate how the meson cloud effects affect ${v}^{\ensuremath{\pi}}(x,{Q}^{2})$ in detail. We find that the meson cloud correction causes an overall 32% reduction of the valence quark distribution and an enhancement at the small Bjorken $x$ regime. Besides, we also find that the dressing effect of the meson cloud will make the valence quark distribution to be softer in the large $x$ region.