Femtoscopy of the Origin of the Nucleon Mass

TL;DR

This paper explores how femtoscopic correlation measurements at the LHC can reveal details about the J/psi-nucleon interaction, shedding light on the nucleon mass origin through gluon distributions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach linking femtoscopic measurements to the nucleon mass problem via the J/psi chromopolarizability and lattice QCD data.

Findings

Correlation functions are sensitive to J/psi-nucleon interaction details.

The method connects femtoscopic data to the nucleon mass origin.

Chromopolarizability significantly influences correlation measurements.

Abstract

We study the prospects of using femtoscopic low-momentum correlation measurements at the Large Hadron Collider to access properties of the J/psi-nucleon interaction. The QCD multipole expansion in terms of the J/psi chromopolarizability relates the forward scattering amplitude to a key matrix element to the origin of the nucleon mass problem, the average chromoelectric gluon distribution in the nucleon. We use information on the J/psi-nucleon interaction provided by lattice QCD simulations and phenomenological models to compute J/psi-nucleon correlation functions. The computed correlation functions show clear sensitivity to the interaction, in particular to the J/psi chromopolarizability.