Connecting baryon light-front wave functions to quasi-transverse-momentum-dependent correlators in lattice QCD

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to extract baryon light-front wave functions from lattice QCD correlators, enabling a deeper understanding of hadron structure through a novel theoretical framework.

Contribution

It introduces a new approach to obtain baryon LFWFs from lattice QCD, including factorization proof, renormalization verification, and evolution equations.

Findings

Successful factorization of correlators into LFWF, lattice, and soft factors.

Verification of LFWF renormalizability up to next-to-leading order.

Derivation of scale evolution equations for the LFWFs.

Abstract

Within light-front quantization, hadrons can be represented on a Fock-space basis of configurations of elementary partons. The coefficients of the expansion are called light-front wave functions (LFWFs), and encode all the dynamical degrees of freedom. We show how to extract the LFWFs of baryons, such as the proton, from equal-time correlators suitable for Lattice QCD simulations. Using an operator product expansion, we prove the factorization of the relevant correlator in the three-quark color-singlet LFWF, a residual lattice factor, and a soft factor that systematically subtracts the additional divergences arising from the factorization. We verify up to next-to-leading order the independent renormalizability of the LFWF, and we derive the evolution equations that govern its scale dependence.