Light-cone PDFs from Lattice QCD

TL;DR

This paper discusses the lattice QCD approach to extracting parton distribution functions (PDFs) using Ji's method, emphasizing the importance of controlling systematic effects like excited states contamination for precise results.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of systematic effects, especially excited states contamination, in the lattice QCD calculation of PDFs using Ji's approach.

Findings

Controlled excited states contamination is crucial for accurate PDFs.

Analysis of systematic effects improves the reliability of lattice QCD PDFs.

Demonstrated feasibility of extracting light-cone PDFs from lattice data.

Abstract

Using the approach proposed a few years ago by X. Ji, it has become feasible to extract parton distribution functions (PDFs) from lattice QCD, a task thought to be extremely difficult before Ji's proposal. In this talk, we discuss this approach, in particular different systematic effects that need to be controlled to ultimately have precise determinations of PDFs. Special attention is paid to the analysis of excited states. We emphasize that it is crucial to control excited states contamination and we show an analysis thereof for our lattice data, used to calculate quasi-PDFs and finally light-cone PDFs in the second part of this proceeding (C. Alexandrou et al., Quasi-PDFs from Twisted mass fermions at the physical point).