Light mesons within the basis light-front quantization framework

TL;DR

This paper applies the basis light-front quantization method to study light mesons, deriving their spectra and internal structure through an effective Hamiltonian approach, with results aligning with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive BLFQ framework for light mesons, including a pseudoscalar contact interaction, and computes their spectra and structure functions.

Findings

Mass spectra consistent with experimental data

Electromagnetic form factors match observed values

Parton distribution functions align with theoretical expectations

Abstract

We study the light-unflavored mesons as relativistic bound states in the nonperturbative Hamiltonian formalism of the basis light-front quantization (BLFQ) approach. The dynamics for the valence quarks of these mesons is specified by an effective Hamiltonian containing the one-gluon exchange interaction and the confining potentials both introduced in our previous work on heavy quarkonia, supplemented additionally by a pseudoscalar contact interaction. We diagonalize this Hamiltonian in our basis function representation to obtain the mass spectrum and the light-front wave functions (LFWFs). Based on these LFWFs, we then study the structure of these mesons by computing the electromagnetic form factors, the decay constants, the parton distribution amplitudes (PDAs), and the parton distribution functions (PDFs). Our results are comparable to those from experiments and other theoretical models.