CLEO and E791 data: a smoking gun for the pion distribution amplitude?

The CLEO experimental data on the pigamma transition are analyzed to next-to-leading order accuracy in QCD perturbation theory using light-cone QCD sum rules. By processing these data along the lines proposed by Schmedding and Yakovlev, and recently revised by us, we obtain new constraints for the Gegenbauer coefficients a(2) and a(4), as well as for the inverse moment <x(-1)>pi of the pion distribution amplitude (DA). The former determine the pion DA at low momentum scale, the latter is crucial in calculating pion form factors. From the results of our analysis we conclude that the data confirm the end-point suppressed shape of the pion DA we previously obtained with QCD sum rules and nonlocal condensates, while the exclusion of both the asymptotic and the Chernyak-Zhitnitsky DAs is reinforced at the 3sigma- and 4sigma-level, respectively. The reliability of the main results of our updated CLEO data analysis is demonstrated. Our pion DA is checked against the di-jets data from the E791 experiment, providing credible evidence for our results far more broadly. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.