Measurement of the TMD soft function on the lattice using the auxiliary field representation of the Wilson line

TL;DR

This paper introduces a lattice-based method using auxiliary fermion fields to compute the TMD soft function and Collins-Soper kernel, providing a new approach to nonperturbative QCD calculations.

Contribution

It presents a novel lattice formulation of the Wilson line via auxiliary fields to extract the TMD soft function and Collins-Soper kernel.

Findings

Initial numerical results demonstrate the feasibility of the method.

The approach successfully maps Euclidean lattice results to Minkowski space.

Methodology offers a new nonperturbative tool for TMD studies.

Abstract

The transverse momentum dependent (TMD) soft function and Collins-Soper (CS) kernel may be obtained by formulating the Wilson line in terms of auxiliary one-dimensional fermion fields on the lattice. Our computation takes place in the region of the lattice that corresponds to the "spacelike" region in Minkowski space in order to obtain the Collins soft function. The matching of our result to the Collins soft function is achieved through the mapping of the auxiliary field directional vector that to the Wilson line rapidity. In Euclidean space, this directional vector is complex, having a purely imaginary time component. We present some exploratory numerical results of our lattice calculation, and discuss the methodology employed.