GAMMA-GAMMA-]PI(0)PI(0) CONTRIBUTION TO THE PROCESS E(+)E(-)-]E(+)E(-)PI(0)PI(0)

We consider the O(p(4)) predictions of chiral perturbation theory (chi PT) in the process gamma gamma-->pi(0) pi(0), together with the study of the existing experimental measurements and the planned new ones. At the Frascati phi factory DA phi NE the rate of the events e(+)e(-)-->e(+)e(-)pi(0) pi(0) is large enough to allow for a measurement of the cross section with a good statistical sensitivity. However, a quantitative analysis of the commonly used approximation of considering only real photons for the detection of the gamma gamma-->pi(0) pi(0) signal is still lacking. This motivates us to compute the cross section in chi PT for the production of pi(0) pairs due to off-shell photons. A measurement of the azimuthal correlations would test the higher order chi PT corrections independently from the measurement of the cross section. We approximate these corrections by including the contribution of the low-lying vector resonances in the scattering amplitude.