Light-front QCD Research Articles

Gravitational form factors of charmonia

We investigate the gravitational form factors of charmonium. Our method is based on a Hamiltonian formalism on the light front known as basis light-front quantization. The charmonium mass spectrum and light-front wave functions were obtained from diagonalizing an effective Hamiltonian that incorporates confinement from holographic QCD and one-gluon exchange interaction from light-front QCD. We proposed a quantum many-body approach to construct the hadronic matrix elements of the energy momentum tensor T++ and T+−, which are used to extract the gravitational form factors A(Q2) and D(Q2). The obtained form factors satisfy the known constraints, e.g., the von Laue condition. From these quantities, we also extract the energy, pressure and light-front energy distributions of the system. We find that hadrons are multilayer systems. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

ρ -meson spectroscopy and diffractive production using the holographic light-front Schrödinger equation and the ’t Hooft equation

We determine the mass spectroscopy and light-front wave functions (LFWFs) of the ρ-meson by solving the holographic Schrödinger equation of light-front chiral QCD along with the ’t Hooft equation of (1+1)-dimensional QCD in the large Nc limit. Subsequently, we utilize the obtained LFWFs in conjunction with the color glass condensate dipole cross section to calculate the cross sections for the diffractive ρ-meson electroproduction. Our spectroscopic results align well with the experimental data. Predictions for the diffractive cross sections demonstrate good consistency with the available experimental data at different energies from H1 and ZEUS collaborations. Additionally, we show that the resulting LFWFs for the ρ-meson can effectively describe various properties, including its decay constant, distribution amplitudes, electromagnetic form factors, charge radius, magnetic and quadrupole moments. Comparative analyses are conducted with experimental measurements and the available theoretical predictions. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Stress inside the pion in holographic light-front QCD

In this work, we propose a method to compute the gravitational form factor D(Q2) in holographic QCD by exploiting the remarkable correspondence between semiclassical light-front QCD and semiclassical field theories in wrapped spacetime in five dimensions. The use of light-front holography bridges physics at large Q2 as attained in light-front QCD and physics at small Q2 where the coupling to scalar and tensor fields, e.g. glueballs, are dominant. As an application, we compute the D-term for the pion and compare the results with recent lattice simulations. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Quark and gluon distributions in ρ-meson from basis light-front quantization

We solve for the ρ-meson's wave functions from a light-front QCD Hamiltonian determined for its constituent quark-antiquark and quark-antiquark-gluon Fock components, with a three-dimensional confinement using basis light-front quantization. From this, we obtain the leading-twist valence quark's parton distribution functions and transverse momentum-dependent parton distributions inside the ρ-meson. These results are qualitatively consistent with those of other models. We also demonstrate the important effects of a dynamical gluon on the ρ-meson's gluon densities, helicity, transversity, and tensor polarized distributions.

Shedding light on charmonium

We investigate E1 radiative transitions within charmonium in a relativistic approach based on light-front QCD. In quantum field theory, two sets of processes are pure E1: χc0→J/ψγ (ψ→χc0γ) and hc→ηcγ (ηc′→hcγ), both involving the P-wave charmonia. We compute the E1 radiative decay widths as well as the corresponding transition form factors of various processes including those involving 2P states. These observables provide an access to the microscopic structures of the P-wave charmonium. We show that our parameter-free predictions are in excellent agreement with the experimental measurements as well as lattice simulations whenever available. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Predicting sin(2ϕ−ϕs) azimuthal asymmetry in pion-proton induced Drell-Yan process using holographic light-front QCD

We compute the sin(2ϕ−ϕS) azimuthal asymmetry in the pion-nucleon induced Drell-Yan process within transverse momentum dependent factorization. We employ the holographic light-front pion wave functions to calculate its leading-twist transverse momentum dependent parton distributions (TMDs). The Boer-Mulders TMD of the pion is then convoluted with the transversity TMD of the proton evaluated in a light-front quark-diquark model constructed with the wave functions predicted by the soft-wall AdS/QCD to obtain the azimuthal asymmetry in the Drell-Yan process. The gluon rescattering is pivotal to predict nonzero pion Boer-Mulders TMD. We investigate the utility of a nonperturbative SU(3) gluon rescattering kernel going beyond the usual approximation of perturbative U(1) gluons. The holographic light-front QCD approach provides a powerful tool for exploring the role of nonperturbative QCD effects in the Drell-Yan process and may help to guide future experimental measurements. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Gluon contribution to the mechanical properties of a dressed quark in light-front Hamiltonian QCD

We calculate the contribution to the gravitational form factors (GFFs) from the gluon part of the energy-momentum tensor in QCD. We take a simple spin $1/2$ composite state, namely a quark dressed with a gluon. We use the light-front Hamiltonian QCD approach in the light-front gauge. We also present the effect of the gluon on the mechanical properties like the pressure, shear and energy distributions of the dressed quark state.

Polarized gluon distribution in the proton from holographic light-front QCD

We obtain the gluon parton distribution functions (PDFs) in the proton within the extended light-front holographic QCD framework, where the proton couples with the spin-two Pomeron in Anti-de Sitter space, together with constraints imposed by the Veneziano model. The gluon helicity asymmetry, after satisfying the perturbative QCD constraints at small and large longitudinal momentum regions, agrees with existing experimental measurements. The polarized gluon distribution is consistent with global analyses. We predict the gluon helicity contribution to the proton spin, $\Delta G=0.221^{+0.056}_{-0.044}$, close to the recent analysis with updated data sets and PHENIX measurement and the lattice QCD simulations. We subsequently present the unpolarized and polarized gluon generalized parton distributions in the proton.

Transverse structure of the pion beyond leading twist with basis light-front quantization

We investigate the twist-3 transverse-momentum-dependent parton distribution functions (TMDs) of the pion with basis light-front quantization. The twist-3 TMDs are not independent and can be decomposed into twist-2 and genuine twist-3 terms from the equations of motion (EOM). We compute the TMDs from the resulting light-front wave functions obtained by diagonalizing the light-front QCD Hamiltonian, determined for pion's constituent quark-antiquark and quark-antiquark-gluon Fock sectors, with three-dimensional confinement. We also obtain the twist-3 parton distribution functions (PDFs) and show that they preserve the sum rule, which affirms the robustness of our approach. This is the first time that theoretical predictions are made for subleading twist structures of the pion containing interference terms between two light-front Fock sectors.

Pion spectroscopy and dynamics using the holographic light-front Schrödinger equation and the 't Hooft equation

We show that the holographic Schrödinger equation of light-front chiral QCD, together with the 't Hooft equation of (1+1)-dimensional QCD in the large Nc limit, can simultaneously describe pion spectroscopy as well as the pion decay constant, charge radius, electromagnetic form factor, photon-to-pion transition form factor, Parton Distribution Function (PDF) and Distribution Amplitude (DA). Furthermore, the chiral-limit constraints, as encoded in the Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner (GMOR) relation, are satisfied.

Light-front holography model of the EMC effect

A new two-component model of the EMC effect based on Light-Front Holographic QCD (LFHQCD) is presented. The model suggests the EMC effect is the result of the nuclear potential breaking SU(6) symmetry. The model separates the $F_2^A$ nuclear structure function into two parts: a free contribution, involving the addition of proton and neutron structure functions weighted by the number of protons and neutrons respectively, and a nuclear/medium modified contribution that involves a universal function for all nuceli. Further, the model displays a connection with the correlation between the size of the EMC effect and the SRC pair density, $a_2$ - extracted from kinematic plateaus at around $x$ > 1 in inclusive quasi-elastic (QE) scattering.

Light-front wavefunctions of mesons by design

We develop a mechanism to build the light-front wavefunctions (LFWFs) of meson bound states on a small-sized basis function representation. Unlike in a standard Hamiltonian formalism, the Hamiltonian in this method is implicit, and the information of the system is carried directly by the functional form and adjustable parameters of the LFWFs. In this work, we model the LFWFs for four charmonium states, eta _c, J/psi , psi ', and psi (3770) as superpositions of orthonormal basis functions. We choose the basis functions as eigenfunctions of an effective Hamiltonian, which has a longitudinal confining potential in addition to the transverse confining potential from light-front holographic QCD. We determine the basis function parameters and superposition coefficients by employing both guidance from the nonrelativistic description of the meson states and the experimental measurements of the meson decay widths. With the obtained wavefunctions, we study the features of those meson states, including charge radii and parton distribution functions. We use the J/psi LFWF to calculate the meson production in diffractive deep inelastic scattering and ultra-peripheral heavy-ion collisions, and the eta _c LFWF to calculate its diphoton transition form factor. Both results show good agreement with experiments. The obtained LFWFs have simple-functional forms and can be readily used to predict additional experimental observables.

Momentum transfer dependence of heavy quarkonium electroproduction

We investigate the momentum transfer dependence of differential cross sections d\sigma/dtdσ/dt in diffractive electroproduction of heavy quarkonia on proton targets. Model predictions for d\sigma/dtdσ/dt within the light-front QCD dipole formalism are based on a realistic model for a proper correlation between the impact parameter \vec bb⃗ of a collision and color dipole orientation \vec rr⃗. We demonstrate a significance of \vec b-\vec rb⃗−r⃗ correlation by comparing with a standard simplification \vec{b}\parallel\vec{r}b⃗∥r⃗, frequently used in the literature.

Predictions for the Sivers single-spin asymmetry from holographic QCD

A new approach to nonperturbative QCD, holographic light-front QCD, provides a comprehensive model for hadron dynamics and spectroscopy, incorporating color confinement, a universal hadron mass scale, the prediction of a massless pion in the chiral limit, and connections between the spectroscopy of mesons, baryons and tetraquarks across the full hadron spectrum. In this article we present predictions for the Sivers asymmetry and related transverse momentum distributions for the proton based on the light-front wavefunctions of the baryon eigenstate predicted by holographic QCD.

Meson masses and decay constants in holographic QCD consistent with ChPT and HQET

We focus on the chiral and heavy quark mass expansion of mesons masses and decay constants. We propose a light-front QCD formalism for the evaluation of these quantities, consistent with chiral perturbation theory and heavy quark effective theory.

Gravitational form factors and mechanical properties of a quark at one loop in light-front Hamiltonian QCD

We calculate the gravitational form factors (GFFs) and pressure, shear, and energy distributions for a quark state dressed with a gluon at one loop in QCD. We use the light-front Hamiltonian approach. In the light-front gauge, we use a two-component formalism to eliminate the constrained fields. The state may be thought of as a perturbative model for a relativistic spin-$1/2$ composite system having a gluonic degree of freedom. We compare the results with model calculations for a nucleon.

Towards a single scale-dependent Pomeron in holographic light-front QCD

The Pomeron Regge trajectory underlies the dynamics dependence of hadronic total cross sections and diffractive reactions at high energies. The physics of the Pomeron is closely related to the gluon distribution function and the gluon gravitational form factor of the target hadron. In this article we examine the scale dependence of the nonperturbative gluon distribution in the nucleon and the pion, which was derived in a previous article [G. F. de T\'eramond, H. G. Dosch, T. Liu, R. S. Sufian, S. J. Brodsky, and A. Deur, Gluon matter distribution in the proton and pion from extended holographic light-front QCD, Phys. Rev. D 104, 114005 (2021)] in the framework of holographic light-front QCD and the Veneziano model. We argue that the QCD evolution of the gluon distribution function $g(x,\ensuremath{\mu})$ to large ${\ensuremath{\mu}}^{2}$ leads to a single scale-dependent Pomeron. The resulting Pomeron trajectory ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{P}(t,\ensuremath{\mu})$ not only depends on the momentum transfer squared $t$, but also on the physical scale $\ensuremath{\mu}$ of the amplitude, such as the virtuality ${Q}^{2}$ of the interacting photon in inclusive diffractive electroproduction, thus unifying the soft and the perturbative Pomeron. This can explain not only the ${Q}^{2}$ evolution of the proton structure function ${F}_{2}(x,{Q}^{2})$ at small $x$, but also the observed energy and ${Q}^{2}$ dependence of high energy diffractive processes involving virtual photons up to LHC energies.

Two Schrödinger-like Equations for hadrons

In this talk, based on [1, 2], I argue that the holographic Schrödinger Equation of (3 +1)-dim, conformal light-front QCD and the ’t Hooft Equation of (1+1)-dim, large Nc QCD, can be complementary to each other in providing a first approximation to hadron spectroscopy. Together, the two equations play a role in hadronic physics analogous that of the ordinary Schrödinger Equation in atomic physics.

Longitudinal dynamics and chiral symmetry breaking in holographic light-front QCD

The breaking of chiral symmetry in holographic light-front QCD is encoded in its longitudinal dynamics with its chiral limit protected by the superconformal algebraic structure which governs its transverse dynamics. The scale in the longitudinal light-front Hamiltonian determines the confinement strength in this direction: It is also responsible for most of the light meson ground state mass consistent with the Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner constraint. Longitudinal confinement and the breaking of chiral symmetry are found to be different manifestations of the same underlying dynamics as found in 't Hooft large $N_C$ QCD(1 + 1) model.

Gluon matter distribution in the proton and pion from extended holographic light-front QCD

The holographic light-front QCD framework provides a unified nonperturbative description of the hadron mass spectrum, form factors and quark distributions. In this article we extend holographic QCD in order to describe the gluonic distribution in both the proton and pion from the coupling of the metric fluctuations induced by the spin-two Pomeron with the energy momentum tensor in anti--de Sitter space, together with constraints imposed by the Veneziano model{\color{blue},} without additional free parameters. The gluonic and quark distributions are shown to have significantly different effective QCD scales.