We present a general analysis of the orbital angular momentum (OAM) distribution of gluons $L_g(x)$ inside the nucleon with particular emphasis on the small-$x$ region. We derive a novel operator representation of $L_g(x)$ in terms of Wilson lines and argue that it is approximately proportional to the gluon helicity distribution $L_g(x) approx -2Delta G(x)$ at small-$x$. We also compute longitudinal single spin asymmetry in exclusive diffractive dijet production in lepton-nucleon scattering in the next-to-eikonal approximation and show that the asymmetry is a direct probe of the gluon helicity/OAM distribution as well as the QCD odderon exchange.
We determine the small Bjorken $x$ asymptotics of the quark and gluon orbital angular momentum (OAM) distributions in the proton in the double-logarithmic approximation (DLA), which resums powers of $alpha_s ln^2 (1/x)$ with $alpha_s$ the strong coupling constant. Starting with the operator definitions for the quark and gluon OAM, we simplify them at small $x$, relating them, respectively, to the polarized dipole amplitudes for the quark and gluon helicities defined in our earlier works. Using the small-$x$ evolution equations derived for these polarized dipole amplitudes earlier we arrive at the following small-$x$ asymptotics of the quark and gluon OAM distributions in the large-$N_c$ limit: begin{align} L_{q + bar{q}} (x, Q^2) = - Delta Sigma (x, Q^2) sim left(frac{1}{x}right)^{frac{4}{sqrt{3}} , sqrt{frac{alpha_s , N_c}{2 pi}} }, L_G (x, Q^2) sim Delta G (x, Q^2) sim left(frac{1}{x}right)^{frac{13}{4 sqrt{3}} , sqrt{frac{alpha_s , N_c}{2 pi}}} . end{align}
We introduced a generalized Wilson line gauge link that reproduces both staple and near straight links in different limits. We then studied the gauge-invariant bi-local orbital angular momentum operator with such a general gauge link, in the framework of Chen et. al. decomposition of gauge fields. At the appropriate combination of limits, the operator reproduces both Jaffe-Manohar and Jis operator structure and offers a continuous analytical interpolation between the two in the small-$x$ limit. We also studied the potential OAM which is defined as the difference between the two, and how it depends on the geometry or orientation of the gauge links.
We derive analytical results for unintegrated color dipole gluon distribution function at small transverse momentum. By Fourier transforming the $S$-matrix for large dipoles we derive the results in the form of a series of Bells polynomials. Interestingly, when resumming the series in leading log accuracy, the results showing up striking similarity with the Sudakov form factor with role play of coupling is being done by a constant that stems from the saddle point condition along the saturation line.
The orbital angular momentum of quarks and gluons contributes significantly to the proton spin budget and attracted a lot of attention in the recent years, both theoretically and experimentally. We summarize the various definitions of parton orbital angular momentum together with their relations with parton distributions functions. In particular, we highlight current theoretical puzzles and give some prospects.
We perform a phenomenological analysis of the $cos 2 phi $ azimuthal asymmetry in virtual photon plus jet production induced by the linear polarization of gluons in unpolarized $pA$ collisions. Although the linearly polarized gluon distribution becomes maximal at small $x$, TMD evolutionleads to a Sudakov suppression of the asymmetry with increasing invariant mass of the $gamma^*$-jet pair. Employing a small-$x$ model input distribution, the asymmetry is found to be strongly suppressed under TMD evolution, but still remains sufficiently large to be measurable in the typical kinematical region accessible at RHIC or LHC at moderate photon virtuality, whereas it is expected to be negligible in $Z/W$-jet pair production at LHC. We point out the optimal kinematics for RHIC and LHC studies, in order to expedite the first experimental studies of the linearly polarized gluon distribution through this process. We further argue that this is a particularly clean process to test the $k_t$-resummation formalism in the small-$x$ regime.