Transverse structure of electron in momentum space in basis light-front quantization

TL;DR

This paper uses the Basis Light-front Quantization framework to compute the transverse momentum-dependent distribution functions of a physical electron, revealing detailed internal structure consistent with perturbative calculations.

Contribution

It introduces a non-perturbative approach to calculate electron TMDs using BLFQ, providing a new method for studying internal particle structure.

Findings

BLFQ results agree with perturbative calculations

Computed TMDs for a physical electron in momentum space

Demonstrated the effectiveness of BLFQ in QED applications

Abstract

We investigate the leading-twist transverse momentum-dependent distribution functions (TMDs) for a physical electron, a spin-1/2 composite system consisting of a bare electron and a photon, using the Basis Light-front Quantization (BLFQ) framework. The light-front wave functions of the physical electron are obtained from the eigenvectors of the light-front QED Hamiltonian. We evaluate the TMDs using the overlaps of the light-front wave functions. The BLFQ results are found to be in excellent agreement with those TMDs calculated using lowest-order perturbation theory.