The structure of the nucleon from generalized parton distributions

TL;DR

This paper reviews how generalized parton distributions (GPDs) provide a comprehensive framework to analyze the complex internal structure of the nucleon, linking partonic degrees of freedom with spatial and dynamical properties.

Contribution

It introduces the use of GPDs as a tool to explore the nucleon's internal structure, emphasizing impact-parameter distributions and energy-momentum form factors through various dynamical models.

Findings

GPDs encode detailed information about the nucleon's partonic structure.

Impact-parameter dependent distributions reveal spatial distributions of partons.

Form factors of the energy-momentum tensor relate to the nucleon's internal dynamics.

Abstract

Generalized parton distributions (GPDs) have become a standard QCD tool for analyzing and parametrizing the non perturbative parton structure of hadron targets. GPDs might be viewed as non-diagonal overlaps of light-cone wave functions and offer the opportunity to study the partonic content of the nucleon from a new perspective, allowing one to study the interplay between longitudinal and transverse partonic degrees of freedom. In particular, we will review some of the new information encoded in the GPDs through the definition of impact-parameter dependent parton distributions and form factors of the energy-momentum tensor, by exploiting different dynamical models for the nucleon state.