Parton Distributions from Lattice QCD with Momentum Smearing

TL;DR

This paper advances lattice QCD techniques to extract parton distributions using spatial correlations and momentum smearing, enabling more accurate calculations of nucleon structure functions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel momentum improved smearing method and demonstrates its effectiveness in extracting nucleon distributions from lattice QCD.

Findings

Successful extraction of flavor non-singlet distributions

Enhanced nucleon momenta achieved with new smearing technique

Potential for more precise matching to physical distributions

Abstract

In this work we continue our effort to explore a recent proposal, which allows light-cone distributions to be extracted from purely spatial correlations, being thus accessible to lattice methods. In order to test the feasibility of this method, we present our latest results from a twisted mass lattice calculation of the flavor non-singlet momentum, helicity and transversity distributions of the nucleon. Furthermore, we apply a newly proposed momentum improved smearing, which has the potential to reach higher nucleon momenta as required for a safe matching procedure to the physical distribution functions.