Recent Advances in Transverse-Momentum--Dependent Distributions in Lattice QCD
Abstract
Unraveling the three-dimensional structure of hadrons is a central objective in modern nuclear and particle physics. Transverse Momentum Dependent parton distributions (TMDs) provide crucial insights into the interplay between partonic transverse motion and spin, and are indispensable for describing a wide range of high-energy processes at facilities such as JLab, COMPASS, the LHC, and the upcoming Electron-Ion Collider. In recent years, significant progress has been made in accessing TMDs from lattice QCD using novel approaches. Methods based on ratios of Mellin moments, large-momentum effective theory (LaMET), and Coulomb-gauge techniques have enabled first-principles investigations of the Collins-Soper kernel, intrinsic soft functions, TMD wave functions, and TMDPDFs. Recent lattice results for both unpolarized and spin-dependent distributions, including the Boer-Mulders function, demonstrate the feasibility of extracting transverse-momentum--dependent information directly from QCD. This paper reviews recent advances in lattice-QCD studies of TMDs, outlines remaining challenges such as continuum and infinite-momentum extrapolations, and discusses future directions toward precision determinations of hadron structure in three dimensions.
Related
- Gravitational transverse momentum dependent distributions for the gluons
- Extraction of transverse-momentum-dependent helicity distributions of the nucleon
- Deep-neural-network extraction of unpolarized transverse-momentum-dependent parton distributions in bT space from Drell-Yan data
- Transverse momentum dependent parton distributions at small x
- Energy-momentum tensor at small x from gravitational transverse-momentum distributions
BibTeX
@misc{lin2026recent,
title = {{Recent Advances in Transverse-Momentum--Dependent Distributions in Lattice QCD}},
author = {Huey-Wen Lin and Wei Wang and Yong Zhao},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.24785},
eprint = {2610.24785},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.24785},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Recent Advances in Transverse-Momentum--Dependent Distributions in Lattice QCD
AU - Huey-Wen Lin
AU - Wei Wang
AU - Yong Zhao
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/17
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.24785
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.24785
AB - Unraveling the three-dimensional structure of hadrons is a central objective in modern nuclear and particle physics. Transverse Momentum Dependent parton distributions (TMDs) provide crucial insights into the interplay between partonic transverse motion and spin, and are indispensable for describing a wide range of high-energy processes at facilities such as JLab, COMPASS, the LHC, and the upcoming Electron-Ion Collider. In recent years, significant progress has been made in accessing TMDs from lattice QCD using novel approaches. Methods based on ratios of Mellin moments, large-momentum effective theory (LaMET), and Coulomb-gauge techniques have enabled first-principles investigations of the Collins-Soper kernel, intrinsic soft functions, TMD wave functions, and TMDPDFs. Recent lattice results for both unpolarized and spin-dependent distributions, including the Boer-Mulders function, demonstrate the feasibility of extracting transverse-momentum--dependent information directly from QCD. This paper reviews recent advances in lattice-QCD studies of TMDs, outlines remaining challenges such as continuum and infinite-momentum extrapolations, and discusses future directions toward precision determinations of hadron structure in three dimensions.
ER -