Scaling study of the pion electroproduction cross sections and the pion form factor

One of the main objectives of Jefferson Lab is to understand the structure of the nucleon in terms of the quark-gluon degrees of freedom. Measurements of inclusive processes, such as deep inelastic scattering (DIS), have shown that in the limit of large $Q^2$, at fixed values of $x_B$, such processes can be viewed as scattering from individual partons within the hadronic system. A similar factorization of scales, allowing perturbative QCD concepts to be used in the description of hadrons, may be expected in hard exclusive processes. The $Q^2$ dependence of the separated p($e,e^\prime \pi^+$)n cross sections provides one of the best ways to test the factorization of long-distance from short-distance physics, and at which values of $Q^2$ it applies. Such tests will lay the foundation for a reliable interpretation of the results from the GPD program at Jefferson Lab, and for GPD studies with a future electron-ion collider. In this talk I will present a QCD scaling study using published $^{1}$H($e,e^\prime \pi^+$)n cross sections and new results from the $\pi$CT experiment (E01-107), which was carried out in Hall C at Jefferson Lab.