T-odd Leading-Twist Quark TMDs at Small $x$

TL;DR

This paper investigates the small-$x$ behavior of flavor non-singlet T-odd quark TMDs, deriving evolution equations and asymptotics, revealing their dependence on the odderon exchange and sub-eikonal corrections.

Contribution

The study provides new small-$x$ asymptotics for T-odd quark TMDs, including sub-eikonal corrections, and formulates evolution equations in the large-$N_c$ limit.

Findings

Derived small-$x$ asymptotics for Sivers and Boer-Mulders functions.

Formulated and solved evolution equations for TMD operators.

Identified the role of odderon exchange in TMD behavior.

Abstract

We study the small-$x$ asymptotics of the flavor non-singlet T-odd leading-twist quark transverse momentum dependent parton distributions (TMDs), the Sivers and Boer-Mulders functions. While the leading eikonal small-$x$ asymptotics of the quark Sivers function is given by the spin-dependent odderon, we are interested in revisiting the sub-eikonal correction considered by us earlier. We first simplify the expressions for both TMDs at small Bjorken $x$ and then construct small-$x$ evolution equations for the resulting operators in the large-$N_c$ limit, with $N_c$ the number of quark colors. For both TMDs, the evolution equations resum all powers of the double-logarithmic parameter $\alpha_s \, \ln^2 (1/x)$, where $\alpha_s$ is the strong coupling constant, which is assumed to be small. Solving these evolution equations numerically (for the Sivers function) and analytically (for the Boer-Mulders function) we arrive at the following leading small-$x$ asymptotics of these TMDs at large $N_c$: \begin{align} f_{1 \: T}^{\perp \: NS} (x \ll 1 ,k_T^2) & = C_O (x, k_T^2) \, \frac{1}{x} + C_1 (x, k_T^2) \, \left( \frac{1}{x} \right)^{3.4 \, \sqrt{\frac{\alpha_s \, N_c}{4 \pi}}} , \notag \\ h_1^{\perp \, \textrm{NS}} (x \ll 1, k_T^2) & = C (x, k_T^2) \left( \frac{1}{x} \right)^{-1}. \notag \end{align} The functions $C_O (x, k_T^2)$, $C_1 (x, k_T^2)$, and $C (x, k_T^2)$ can be readily obtained in our formalism: they are mildly $x$-dependent and do not strongly affect the power-of-$x$ asymptotics shown above. The function $C_O$, along with the $1/x$ factor, arises from the odderon exchange. For the sub-eikonal contribution to the quark Sivers function (the term with $C_1$), our result shown above supersedes the one obtained in our previous work due to the new contributions identified recently.