Helicity Evolution at Small x: Summary of Recent Developments

TL;DR

This paper develops and solves small-$x$ helicity evolution equations to predict quark helicity PDFs at small $x$, providing insights into the proton spin structure and addressing the spin crisis.

Contribution

It introduces new small-$x$ helicity evolution equations, including saturation effects, and provides a numerical solution in the large-$N_c$ limit for the first time.

Findings

Predicted the behavior of quark helicity PDFs at small $x$

Estimated the contribution of small-$x$ region to proton spin

Provided a numerical solution to the helicity evolution equations

Abstract

We construct small-$x$ evolution equations which can be used to calculate quark and anti-quark helicity TMDs and PDFs, along with the $g_1$ structure function. These evolution equations resum powers of $\alpha_s \, \ln^2 (1/x)$ in the polarization-dependent evolution along with the powers of $\alpha_s \, \ln (1/x)$ in the unpolarized evolution which includes saturation effects. The equations are written in an operator form in terms of polarization-dependent Wilson line-like operators. While the equations do not close in general, they become closed and self-contained systems of non-linear equations in the large-$N_c$ and large-$N_c \, \& \, N_f$ limits. We construct a numerical solution of the helicity evolution equations in the large-$N_c$ limit. Employing the extracted intercept, we are able to predict directly from theory the behavior of the quark helicity PDFs at small $x$, which should have important phenomenological consequences. We also give an estimate of how much of the proton's spin may be at small $x$ and what impact this has on the so-called "spin crisis." Based on JHEP 1601 (2016) 072 (arXiv:1511.06737), arXiv:1610.06197 and arXiv:1610.06188.