The pion polarisability and more measurements on chiral dynamics at COMPASS

Within the physics program of the COMPASS experiment at CERN pion-photon reactions are measured via the Primakoff effect, referring to processes in which high-energetic pions react with the quasi-real photon field that surrounds the target nuclei. The production of a single hard photon in such a pion scattering at lowest momentum transfer to the nucleus is related to pion Compton scattering. From the measured cross-section shape, the pion polarisability has been determined, a result that has been published meanwhile as a Physical Review Letter [ 1 ]. The COMPASS measurement is in tension with the earlier dedicated measurements, and rather in agreement with the theoretical expectation from chiral perturbation theory. The analysis of a more recent high-statistics data taking is underway. Reactions with neutral and more charged pions in the final state are measured and analyzed as well. At low energy in the pion-photon centre-of-momentum system, these reactions are governed by chiral dynamics and contain information relevant for chiral perturbation theory. At higher energies, resonances are produced and their radiative coupling is investigated.