On the pion cloud of the nucleon

We evaluate the two-pion contribution to the nucleon electromagnetic form factors by use of dispersion analysis and chiral perturbation theory. After subtraction of the rho-meson component, we calculate the distributions of charge and magnetization in coordinate space, which can be interpreted as the effects of the pion cloud. We find that the charge distribution of this pion cloud effect peaks at distances of about 0.3 fm. Furthermore, we calculate the contribution of the pion cloud to the isovector charges and radii of the nucleon. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved