QCD sum rules and soft-hard interplay for hadronic form factors

The authors discuss two types of contributions to hadronic form factors in QCD: hard gluon exchange and soft wave function overlap. Within the QCD sum rule approach, the hard contribution has strong numeric suppression by factor (αs/π) approximately 0.1 for each exchange. For this reason, the soft contribution dominates at accessible momentum transfers. The ''humpy'' distribution amplitudes used to enhance hard terms cannot be derived from QCD sum rules in a self-consistent way. The estimates of soft terms obtained within the local quark-hadronic duality approach in all cases are close to existing data, providing an experimental evidence that hard terms are small