Sub-femtometer scale color charge correlations in the proton


Abstract in English

Color charge correlations in the proton at moderately small $xsim 0.1$ are extracted from its light-cone wave function. The charge fluctuations are far from Gaussian and they exhibit interesting dependence on impact parameter and on the relative transverse momentum (or distance) of the gluon probes. We provide initial conditions for small-$x$ Balitsky-Kovchegov evolution of the dipole scattering amplitude with impact parameter and $hat r cdot hat b$ dependence, and with non-zero $C$-odd component due to three-gluon exchange. Lastly, we compute the (forward) Weizsaecker-Williams gluon distributions, including the distribution of linearly polarized gluons, up to fourth order in $A^+$. The correction due to the quartic correlator provides a transverse momentum scale, $q > 0.5$ GeV, for nearly maximal polarization.

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