The spin structure of the pion

Understand

We present the first calculation of the transverse spin structure of the pion in lattice QCD.

• Our simulations are based on two flavors of non-perturbatively improved Wilson fermions, with pion masses as low as 400 MeV in volumes up to (2.1 fm)^3 and lattice spacings below 0.1 fm.
• We find a characteristic asymmetry in the spatial distribution of transversely polarized quarks.
• This asymmetry is very similar in magnitude to the analogous asymmetry we previously obtained for quarks in the nucleon.