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We report the first-ever calculation of the isovector flavor combination of the chiral-odd twist-3 parton distribution $h_L(x)$ for the proton from lattice QCD. We employ gauge configurations with two degenerate light, a strange and a charm quark ($N_f=2+1+1$) of maximally twisted mass fermions with a clover improvement. The lattice has a spatial extent of 3 fm and lattice spacing of 0.093 fm. The values of the quark masses lead to a pion mass of $260$ MeV. We use a source-sink time separation of 1.12 fm to control contamination from excited states. Our calculation is based on the quasi-distribution approach, with three values for the proton momentum: 0.83 GeV, 1.25 GeV, and 1.67 GeV. The lattice data are renormalized non-perturbatively using the RI$$ scheme, and the final result for $h_L(x)$ is presented in the $overline{rm MS}$ scheme at the scale of 2 GeV. Furthermore, we compute in the same setup the transversity distribution, $h_1(x)$, which allows us, in particular, to compare $h_L(x)$ to its Wandzura-Wilczek approximation. We also combine results for the isovector and isoscalar flavor combinations to disentangle the individual quark contributions for $h_1(x)$ and $h_L(x)$, and address the Wandzura-Wilczek approximation in that case as well.
In this study, we present continuum limit results for the unpolarized parton distribution function of the nucleon computed in lattice QCD. This study is the first continuum limit using the pseudo-PDF approach with Short Distance Factorization for factorizing lattice QCD calculable matrix elements. Our findings are also compared with the pertinent phenomenological determinations. Inter alia, we are employing the summation Generalized Eigenvalue Problem (sGEVP) technique in order to optimize our control over the excited state contamination which can be one of the most serious systematic errors in this type of calculations. A crucial novel ingredient of our analysis is the parameterization of systematic errors using Jacobi polynomials to characterize and remove both lattice spacing and higher twist contaminations, as well as the leading twist distribution. This method can be expanded in further studies to remove all other systematic errors.
We present the first direct calculation of the transversity parton distribution function within the nucleon from lattice QCD. The calculation is performed using simulations with the light quark mass fixed to its physical value and at one value of the lattice spacing. Novel elements of the calculations are non-perturbative renormalization and extraction of a formula for the matching to light-cone PDFs. Final results are presented in the $overline{rm MS}$ scheme at a scale of $sqrt{2}$ GeV.
In this work, we present the first-ever calculation of the isovector flavor combination of the twist-3 parton distribution function $g_T(x)$ for the proton from lattice QCD. We use an ensemble of gauge configurations with two degenerate light, a strange and a charm quark ($N_f=2+1+1$) of maximally twisted mass fermions with a clover improvement. The lattice has a spatial extent of 3~fm, lattice spacing of 0.093~fm, and reproduces a pion mass of $260$ MeV. We use the quasi-distribution approach and employ three values of the proton momentum boost, 0.83 GeV, 1.25 GeV, and 1.67 GeV. We use a source-sink separation of 1.12~fm to suppress excited-states contamination. The lattice data are renormalized non-perturbatively. We calculate the matching equation within Large Momentum Effective Theory, which is applied to the lattice data in order to obtain $g_T$. The final distribution is presented in the $overline{rm MS}$ scheme at a scale of 2 GeV. We also calculate the helicity distribution $g_1$ to test the Wandzura-Wilczek approximation for $g_T$. We find that the approximation works well for a broad range of $x$. This work demonstrates the feasibility of accessing twist-3 parton distribution functions from novel methods within lattice QCD and can provide essential insights into the structure of hadrons.
We report on recent results for the pion matrix element of the twist-2 operator corresponding to the average momentum of non-singlet quark densities. For the first time finite volume effects of this matrix element are investigated and come out to be surprisingly large. We use standard Wilson and non-perturbatively improved clover actions in order to control better the extrapolation to the continuum limit. Moreover, we compute, fully non-perturbatively, the renormalization group invariant matrix element, which allows a comparison with experimental results in a broad range of energy scales. Finally, we discuss the remaining uncertainties, the extrapolation to the chiral limit and the quenched approximation.
We present a new method, based on Gaussian process regression, for reconstructing the continuous $x$-dependence of parton distribution functions (PDFs) from quasi-PDFs computed using lattice QCD. We examine the origin of the unphysical oscillations seen in current lattice calculations of quasi-PDFs and develop a nonparametric fitting approach to take the required Fourier transform. The method is tested on one ensemble of maximally twisted mass fermions with two light quarks. We find that with our approach oscillations of the quasi-PDF are drastically reduced. However, the final effect on the light-cone PDFs is small. This finding suggests that the deviation seen between current lattice QCD results and phenomenological determinations cannot be attributed solely on the Fourier transform.