Factorization in Charged Meson Production

Tests of the factorization of hard and soft physics are of fundamental interest for our understanding of the dominant mechanism in exclusive reactions. Increasing the photon virtuality ($Q^2$) in electron scattering experiments allows one to become more and more sensitive to the partonic picture in which hard and soft physics have been shown to factorize. This is of particular importance for Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs), which have been suggested to provide the most complete description of the non-perturbative physics. Meson electroproduction at intermediate energies provides a good way to study the transition from the non-perturbative to the perturbative regime. In this talk I will review tests of factorization of long- and short-distance physics in charged pion production, describe the connection to the pion form factor, and show extensions of these studies to the strange sector.