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Peer-reviewedCC BY 4.0Journal of High Energy Physics

Nucleon parton distribution functions from boosted correlations in the Coulomb gauge

  • Xiang Gao1
  • Jinchen He2,3
  • Joshua Lin3
  • Swagato Mukherjee1
  • Peter Petreczky1
  • Rui Zhang3,4
  • Yong Zhao3
4 affiliations
  1. 1Physics Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory
  2. 2University of Maryland
  3. 3Physics Division, Argonne National Laboratory
  4. 4Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Abstract

A bstract : Recently, a novel approach has been proposed to compute parton distributions through the use of boosted correlators fixed in the Coulomb gauge from lattice QCD, within the framework of Large-Momentum Effective Theory (LaMET). This approach circumvents the need for Wilson lines, potentially enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of lattice calculations. In this work, we present the first exploratory implementation of the Coulomb gauge method for calculating nucleon unpolarized, helicity, and transversity parton distribution functions (PDFs). The calculations are performed on a Highly-Improved-Staggered-Quark ensemble with lattice spacing a = 0.06 fm, volume Ls3× Lt L s 3 × L t = 48 ³ × 64, and valence pion mass m π = 300 MeV, employing boosted nucleon states with momenta up to 3.04 GeV. Our lattice predictions for the valence-quark PDFs — extracted from the real part of the correlators — show good convergence with increasing nucleon momentum and are compatible with the most recent global analyses for all spin structures. On the other hand, the full-quark-channel PDFs obtained from the imaginary part of the correlators exhibit discrepancies between the two large nucleon momenta considered, although the results at the higher momentum are consistent with phenomenology. The discrepancies are likely driven by stronger excited-state contamination in the imaginary matrix elements, which is consistent with the observation in the literature. Overall, this work demonstrates the efficacy of the Coulomb gauge approach for nucleon PDFs and serves as a benchmark for its broader applications.

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Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{gao2026nucleon,
  title = {{Nucleon parton distribution functions from boosted correlations in the Coulomb gauge}},
  author = {Xiang Gao and Jinchen He and Joshua Lin and Swagato Mukherjee and Peter Petreczky and Rui Zhang and Yong Zhao},
  journal = {Journal of High Energy Physics},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.1007/jhep10(2026)041},
  url = {https://link.springer.com/10.1007/JHEP10(2026)041},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - Nucleon parton distribution functions from boosted correlations in the Coulomb gauge
AU  - Xiang Gao
AU  - Jinchen He
AU  - Joshua Lin
AU  - Swagato Mukherjee
AU  - Peter Petreczky
AU  - Rui Zhang
AU  - Yong Zhao
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/05
JO  - Journal of High Energy Physics
DO  - 10.1007/jhep10(2026)041
UR  - https://link.springer.com/10.1007/JHEP10(2026)041
AB  - A bstract : Recently, a novel approach has been proposed to compute parton distributions through the use of boosted correlators fixed in the Coulomb gauge from lattice QCD, within the framework of Large-Momentum Effective Theory (LaMET). This approach circumvents the need for Wilson lines, potentially enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of lattice calculations. In this work, we present the first exploratory implementation of the Coulomb gauge method for calculating nucleon unpolarized, helicity, and transversity parton distribution functions (PDFs). The calculations are performed on a Highly-Improved-Staggered-Quark ensemble with lattice spacing a = 0.06 fm, volume L_s^3× L_t L s 3 × L t = 48 ³ × 64, and valence pion mass m π = 300 MeV, employing boosted nucleon states with momenta up to 3.04 GeV. Our lattice predictions for the valence-quark PDFs — extracted from the real part of the correlators — show good convergence with increasing nucleon momentum and are compatible with the most recent global analyses for all spin structures. On the other hand, the full-quark-channel PDFs obtained from the imaginary part of the correlators exhibit discrepancies between the two large nucleon momenta considered, although the results at the higher momentum are consistent with phenomenology. The discrepancies are likely driven by stronger excited-state contamination in the imaginary matrix elements, which is consistent with the observation in the literature. Overall, this work demonstrates the efficacy of the Coulomb gauge approach for nucleon PDFs and serves as a benchmark for its broader applications.
SN  - 1029-8479
ER  -