Sullivan Process near Threshold and the Pion Gravitational Form Factors

We propose a novel method to experimentally access the gravitational form factors of the charged pion π^{+} through the Sullivan process in electron-proton scattering. We demonstrate that the cross sections of J/ψ photoproduction and ϕ electroproduction near the respective thresholds are dominated by the gluon gravitational form factor of the pion to next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD. We predict cross sections for the Electron-Ion Collider and the Jefferson Lab experiments.