Photon-pion charge asymmetry in e+e− reactions: A laboratory for perturbative QCD phases

Abstract The charge asymmetry in the production of a photon and a meson in e + e - annihilation is studied in perturbative QCD. This quantity measures the interference of amplitudes governed by different momentum scales. It is thus a powerful tool to probe strong interaction phases at high energy and in the context of Sudakov exponentiation and the chromo Coulomb phase. We find a null result at the lowest non-trivial order off α s in the entire kinematic region described by perturbative QCD.