In the partonic (or light-front) description of relativistic systems the
electromagnetic form factors are expressed in terms of frame-independent charge
and magnetization densities in transverse space. This formulation allows one to
identify the chiral components of nucleon structure as the peripheral densities
at transverse distances b = O(M_pi^{-1}) and compute them in a parametrically
controlled manner. A dispersion relation connects the large-distance behavior
of the transverse charge and magnetization densities to the spectral functions
of the Dirac and Pauli form factors near the two-pion threshold at timelike t =
4 M_pi^2. Using relativistic chiral effective field theory in the leading-order
approximation, we (a) derive the asymptotic behavior (Yukawa tail) of the
isovector transverse densities in the "chiral" region b = O(M_pi^{-1}) and the
"molecular" region b = O(M_N^2/M_pi^3); (b) perform the heavy-baryon expansion;
(c) explain the relative magnitude of the peripheral charge and magnetization
densities in a simple mechanical picture; (d) include Delta intermediate states
and study the densities in the large-N_c limit of QCD; (e) quantify the spatial
region where the chiral components are numerically dominant; (f) calculate the
chiral divergences of the b^2-weighted moments of the transverse densities
(charge and magnetic radii) and determine their spatial support. Our approach
provides a concise formulation of the spatial structure of the nucleon's chiral
component and offers new insights into basic properties of the chiral
expansion. It relates the information extracted from low-t elastic form factors
to the generalized parton distributions probed in peripheral high-energy
scattering processes.Comment: 52 pages, 13 figure
