TMD Parton Distribution and Fragmentation Functions with QCD Evolution

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the current status of TMD PDFs and FFs, incorporating QCD evolution to improve their reliability for testing TMD-factorization and exploring its potential breakdown in specific processes.

Contribution

It introduces a method to generate QCD-evolved TMD PDFs and FFs using existing parametrizations, clarifies their definitions, and emphasizes the importance of evolution in phenomenological analyses.

Findings

Evolution significantly impacts TMD functions.

QCD evolution should be included in future studies.

Provides tables and calculations for TMD parametrizations.

Abstract

We assess the current phenomenological status of transverse momentum dependent (TMD) parton distribution functions (PDFs) and fragmentation functions (FFs) and study the effect of consistently including perturbative QCD (pQCD) evolution. Our goal is to initiate the process of establishing reliable, QCD-evolved parametrizations for the TMD PDFs and TMD FFs that can be used both to test TMD-factorization and to search for evidence of the breakdown of TMD-factorization that is expected for certain processes. In this article, we focus on spin-independent processes because they provide the simplest illustration of the basic steps and can already be used in direct tests of TMD-factorization. Our calculations are based on the Collins-Soper-Sterman (CSS) formalism, supplemented by recent theoretical developments which have clarified the precise definitions of the TMD PDFs and TMD FFs needed for a valid TMD-factorization theorem. Starting with these definitions, we numerically generate evolved TMD PDFs and TMD FFs using as input existing parametrizations for the collinear PDFs, collinear FFs, non-perturbative factors in the CSS factorization formalism, and recent fixed-scale fits. We confirm that evolution has important consequences, both qualitatively and quantitatively, and argue that it should be included in future phenomenological studies of TMD functions. Our analysis is also suggestive of extensions to processes that involve spin-dependent functions such as the Boer-Mulders, Sivers, or Collins functions, which we intend to pursue in future publications. At our website we have made available the tables and calculations needed to obtain the TMD parametrizations presented herein.