Light-front spin-dependent spectral function and nucleon momentum distributions for a three-body system

Abstract

Poincare' covariant definitions for the spin-dependent spectral function and for the momentum distributions within the light-front Hamiltonian dynamics are proposed for a three-fermion bound system, starting from the light-front wave function of the system. The adopted approach is based on the Bakamjian-Thomas construction of the Poincare' generators, that allows one to easily import the familiar and wide knowledge on the nuclear interaction into a light-front framework. The proposed formalism can find useful applications in refined nuclear calculations, like the ones needed for evaluating the EMC effect or the semi-inclusive deep inelastic cross sections with polarized nuclear targets, since remarkably the light-front unpolarized momentum distribution by definition fulfills both normalization and momentum sum rules. It is also shown a straightforward generalization of the definition of the light-front spectral function to an A-nucleon system.