Light-cone Distribution Amplitudes of the Nucleon and Negative Parity Nucleon Resonances from Lattice QCD

We present the results of a lattice study of light-cone distribution amplitudes (DAs) of the nucleon and negative parity nucleon resonances using two flavors of dynamical (clover) fermions on lattices of different volumes and pion masses down to m_pi = 150 MeV. We find that the three valence quarks in the proton share their momentum in the proportion 37% : 31% : 31%, where the larger fraction corresponds to the u-quark that carries proton helicity, and determine the value of the wave function at the origin in position space, which turns out to be small compared to the existing estimates based on QCD sum rules. Higher-order moments are constrained by our data and are all compatible with zero within our uncertainties. We also calculate the normalization constants of the higher-twist DAs that are related to the distribution of quark angular momentum. Furthermore, we use the variational method and customized parity projection operators to study the states with negative parity. In this way we are able to separate the contributions of the two lowest states that, as we argue, possibly correspond to N*(1535) and a mixture of N*(1650) and the pion-nucleon continuum, respectively. It turns out that the state that we identify with N*(1535) has a very different DA as compared to both the second observed negative parity state and the nucleon, which may explain the difference in the decay patterns of N*(1535) and N*(1650) observed in experiment.

Nucleon generalized form factors and sigma term from lattice QCD near the physical quark mass

We present new N_f=2 data for the nucleon generalized form factors, varying volume, lattice spacing and pion mass, down to 150 MeV. We also give an update of our direct calculation of the nucleon sigma term for a range of pion mass values including the lightest one.

Moments of structure functions for $N_f=2$ near the physical point

We report on our on-going study of the lower moments of iso-vector polarised and unpolarised structure functions, $g_A$ and $langle xrangle_{u-d}$, respectively, and the iso-vector scalar and tensor charge, for $N_f=2$ non-perturbatively improved clover fermions. With pion masses which go down to about 150 MeV, we investigate finite volume effects and excited state contributions.