The angular momentum decomposition in the scalar diquark model

TL;DR

This paper investigates the decomposition of proton angular momentum within the scalar diquark model, showing that differences between common decompositions emerge at two-loop level, highlighting the role of spectator-induced torque.

Contribution

It provides a perturbative QED-based justification within the diquark model that the difference between angular momentum decompositions appears at two-loop order.

Findings

Difference between decompositions vanishes at one-loop

Difference appears at two-loop level due to spectator torque

Supports interpretation of decomposition differences as torque effects

Abstract

One of the challenges of hadronic physics is to fully understand the structure of the proton. In particular, there is nowadays a great interest in the decomposition of its total angular momentum into orbital angular momentum and intrinsic spin, as well as identifying contributions from valence quarks, sea quarks and gluons. The most common decompositions of angular momentum are the Jaffe-Manohar (canonical) and Ji (kinetic) decompositions, which differ in the way contributions are attributed to quarks and gluons. Using perturbation theory, explicit one-loop calculations found that the difference between such decompositions vanishes. We justify within the diquark model in QED that the difference appears at two-loop level, supporting the interpretation of such a difference as originating from the torque exerted by the spectator system on the struck quark.