Gluon fragmentation functions in the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model

TL;DR

This paper derives gluon fragmentation functions within the NJL model by modeling gluons as quark-antiquark pairs, solving an integral equation, and demonstrating improved agreement with experimental data after QCD evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to obtain gluon fragmentation functions in the NJL model by treating gluons as $q\bar q$ pairs and solving an integral equation for all orders.

Findings

Solutions are stable under parameter variation.

Including gluon functions improves data agreement.

QCD evolution enhances the model's predictive power.

Abstract

We derive gluon fragmentation functions in the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model by treating a gluon as a pair of color lines formed by fictitious quark and anti-quark ($q\bar q$). Gluon elementary fragmentation functions are obtained from the quark and anti-quark elementary fragmentation functions for emitting specific mesons in the NJL model under the requirement that the $q\bar q$ pair maintains in the flavor-singlet state after meson emissions. An integral equation, which iterates the gluon elementary fragmentation functions to all orders, is then solved to yield the gluon fragmentation functions at a model scale. It is observed that these solutions are stable with respect to variation of relevant model parameters, especially after QCD evolution to a higher scale is implemented. We show that the inclusion of the gluon fragmentation functions into the theoretical predictions from only the quark fragmentation functions greatly improves the agreement with the SLD data for the pion and kaon productions in $e^+e^-$ annihilation. Our proposal provides a plausible construct for the gluon fragmentation functions, which are supposed to be null in the NJL model.