Electromagnetic properties of the pion as a composite Nambu-Goldstone boson

Motivated by the Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model of light mesons, we introduce a covariant separable interaction to model the structure of relativistic quark-antiquark systems. The Schwinger-Dyson equation for the quark self-energy is solved analytically, generating a dynamical quark mass through spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry, and yielding a pion which has zero mass in the chiral limit. The Bethe-Salpeter vertex function for this qq¯ pion, which has a momentum distribution and composite structure associated with the interaction, is obtained analytically. Using this vertex function, and a similar one for the ρ meson, we calculate the electromagnetic observables of this composite Nambu-Goldstone boson, including effects from ρ-meson dominance processes. Our calculation takes the composite structure of the mesons into account. The ρ-meson effects are found to be very small in the pion charge form factor, but substantial in the charge radius. Using the model, predictions are made for ${\gamma }^{\mathrm{*}}$ ${\mathrm{\pi }}^0$→γ and ρπγ transition form factors.