On the structure of the pion: A QCD--inspired point of view

The effective interaction between a quark and an anti-quark as obtained previously with by the method of iterated resolvents is replaced by the so called up-down-model and applied to flavor off-diagonal mesons including the pion. The only free parameters are those of canonical quantum chromo-dynamics (QCD), particularly the coupling constant and the masses of the quarks. The so obtained light-cone wave function can be used to calculate the pion's form factor, particularly its mean-square radius can be computed analytically. The results allow for the exciting conclusion that the pion is built by highly relativistic constituents, in strong contrast to composite systems like atoms or nuclei with non-relativistic constituents.