Quasi Distribution Amplitude of Heavy Quarkonia

The recently-proposed quasi distributions point out a promising direction for lattice QCD to investigate the light-cone correlators, such as parton distribution functions (PDF) and distribution amplitudes (DA), directly in the $x$-space. Owing to its excessive simplicity, the heavy quarkonium can serve as an ideal theoretical laboratory to ascertain certain features of quasi-DA. In the framework of non-relativistic QCD (NRQCD) factorization, we compute the order-$\alpha_s$ correction to both light-cone distribution amplitudes (LCDA) and quasi-DA associated with the lowest-lying quarkonia, with the transverse momentum UV cutoff interpreted as the renormalization scale. We confirm analytically that the quasi-DA of a quarkonium does reduce to the respective LCDA in the infinite-momentum limit. We also observe that, provided that the momentum of a charmonium reaches about 2-3 times its mass, the quasi-DAs already converge to the LCDAs to a decent level. These results might provide some useful guidance for the future lattice study of the quasi distributions.Comment: 32 pages, 5 Figures, 1 tabl

Solving the Bars-Green equation for moving mesons in two-dimensional QCD

The two-dimensional QCD in the large $N$ limit, generally referred to as the 't Hooft model, is numerically investigated in the axial gauge in a comprehensive manner. The corresponding Bethe-Salpeter equation for a bound $q\bar{q}$ pair, originally derived by Bars and Green in 1978, was first numerically tackled by Li and collaborators in late 1980s, yet only for the {\it stationary} mesons. In this paper, we make further progress by numerically solving the Bars-Green equation for {\it moving} mesons, ranging from the chiral pion to charmonium. By choosing several different quark masses, we computed the corresponding quark condensates, meson spectra and their decay constants for a variety of meson momenta, and found satisfactory agreement with their counterparts obtained using light-cone gauge, thus numerically verified the gauge and Poincar\'{e} invariance of the 't Hooft model. Moreover, we have explicitly confirmed that, as the meson gets more and more boosted, the large component of the Bars-Green wave function indeed approaches the corresponding 't Hooft light-cone wave function, while the small component of the wave function rapidly fades away.Comment: v2, 25 pages, 12 figures, and 1 table; Some figures updated, references added, typo corrrected; to appear in JHE

Reconstructing parton densities at large fractional momenta

Parton distribution functions (PDFs) are nonperturbative objects defined by nonlocal light-cone correlations. They cannot be computed directly from Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). Using a standard lattice QCD approach, it is possible to compute moments of PDFs, which are matrix elements of local operators. Recently, an alternative approach has been proposed, based on the introduction of quasi-parton distribution functions (quasi-PDFs), which are matrix elements of equal-time spatial correlations and hence calculable on lattice. Quasi-PDFs approach standard PDFs in the limit of very large longitudinal proton momenta $P^z$. This limit is not attainable in lattice simulations, and quasi-PDFs fail to reproduce PDFs at high fractional longitudinal momenta. In this paper, we propose a method to improve the reconstruction of PDFs by combining information from quasi-PDFs and from the Mellin moments of regular PDFs. We test our method using the diquark spectator model for up and down valence distributions of both unpolarized and helicity PDFs. In the future, the method can be used to produce PDFs entirely based on lattice QCD results.Comment: 12 pages, 7 double-panel figures in pdf, RevTeX4-

One-Loop Matching for Parton Distributions: Non-Singlet Case

We derive one-loop matching condition for non-singlet quark distributions in transverse-momentum cut-off scheme, including unpolarized, helicity and transversity distributions. The matching is between the quasi-distribution defined by static correlation at finite nucleon momentum and the light-cone distribution measurable in experiments. The result is useful for extracting the latter from the former in a lattice QCD calculation.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Probing Parton Orbital Angular Momentum in Longitudinally Polarized Nucleon

While the total orbital angular momentum (OAM) of a definite quark flavor in a longitudinally-polarized nucleon can be obtained through a sum rule involving twist-two generalized parton distribution (GPDs), its distribution as a function of parton momentum in light-front coordinates is more complicated to define and measure because it involves intrinsically twist-three effects. In this paper, we consider two different parton OAM distributions. The first is manifestly gauge invariant, and its moments are local operators and calculable in lattice QCD. We show that it can potentially be measured through twist-three GPDs. The second is the much-debated canonical OAM distribution natural in free-field theory and light-cone gauge. We show the latter in light-cone gauge can also be related to twist-three GPDs as well as quantum phase-space Wigner distributions, both being measurable in high-energy experiments.Comment: 14 pages, no figur