Quantifying the nucleon's pion cloud with transverse charge densities

The transverse densities in a fast-moving nucleon offer a model-independent framework for analyzing the spatial structure of the pion cloud and its role in current matrix elements. We calculate the chiral large-distance component of the charge density in a dispersion representation of the form factor and discuss its partonic interpretation. It dominates over the nonchiral density only at surprisingly large distances above ~2 fm. The chiral component can be probed in precision low-Q² elastic eN scattering or in peripheral deep-inelastic processes that resolve its quark/gluon content.