Extracting many-body color charge correlators in the proton from exclusive DIS at large Bjorken x

TL;DR

This paper develops a QCD light front formalism to extract many-body color charge correlators in the proton from exclusive deep inelastic scattering, enabling new insights into proton structure and the Odderon form factor.

Contribution

It introduces a novel formalism for calculating color charge correlators in the proton from experimental data, extending the domain of McLerran-Venugopalan models to large x and nucleons.

Findings

Potential to extract Odderon form factor from exclusive meson measurements.

Extends validity of color charge correlator models to large x and non-zero momentum transfer.

Reduces uncertainties in initial conditions for QCD evolution at small x.

Abstract

We construct a general QCD light front formalism to compute many-body color charge correlators in the proton. These form factors can be extracted from deeply inelastic scattering measurements of exclusive final states in analogy to electromagnetic form factors extracted in elastic electron scattering experiments. Particularly noteworthy is the potential to extract a novel Odderon form factor, either indirectly from exclusive $J/\Psi$ measurements, or directly from exclusive measurements of the $\eta_c$ or tensor mesons at large Bjorken x. Besides the intrinsic information conveyed by these color charge correlators on the spatio-temporal tomography at the sub-femtoscopic scale at large x, the corresponding cumulants extend the domain of validity of McLerran-Venugopalan type weight functionals from small x and large nuclei to nucleons and light nuclei at large $x$, as well as to non-zero momentum transfer. This may significantly reduce nonperturbative systematic uncertainties in the initial conditions for QCD evolution equations at small $x$ and could be of strong relevance for the phenomenology of present and future collider experiments.