Terms Of Quarks Research Articles

Experimental Study of Cold Dense Nuclear Matter

The fundamental theory of nuclear interactions, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), operates in terms of quarks and gluons at higher resolution. At low resolution the relevant degrees of freedom are nucleons. Two-nucleon Short-Range Correlations (SRC) help to interconnect these two descriptions. SRCs are temporary fluctuations of strongly interacting close pairs of nucleons. The distance between the two nucleons is comparable to their radii and their relative momenta are larger than the fermi sea level. According to the electron scattering experiments held in the last decade, SRCs have far-reaching impacts on many-body systems, the nucleon-nucleon interactions, and nuclear substructure. The modern experiments with ion beams and cryogenic liquid hydrogen target make it possible to study properties of the nuclear fragments after quasi-elastic knockout of a single nucleon or an SRC pair. Here we review the status and perspectives of the SRC program in so-called inverse kinematics at JINR (Dubna, Russia). The first SRC experiment at the BM@N spectrometer (2018) with 4 GeV/c/nucleon carbon beam has shown that detection of an intact 11B nucleus after interaction selects out the quasi-elastic knockout reaction with minimal contribution of initial- and final-state interactions. Also, 25 events of SRC-breakups showed agreement in SRC properties as known from electron beam experiments. The analysis of the second measurement of SRC at BM@N held in 2022 with an improved setup is currently ongoing. The SRC project at JINR moved to a new experimental area in 2023, where the next measurement is being planned in terms of experimental setup and physics goals.

Evidence for intrinsic charm quarks in the proton

The theory of the strong force, quantum chromodynamics, describes the proton in terms of quarks and gluons. The proton is a state of two up quarks and one down quark bound by gluons, but quantum theory predicts that in addition there is an infinite number of quark–antiquark pairs. Both light and heavy quarks, whose mass is respectively smaller or bigger than the mass of the proton, are revealed inside the proton in high-energy collisions. However, it is unclear whether heavy quarks also exist as a part of the proton wavefunction, which is determined by non-perturbative dynamics and accordingly unknown: so-called intrinsic heavy quarks1. It has been argued for a long time that the proton could have a sizable intrinsic component of the lightest heavy quark, the charm quark. Innumerable efforts to establish intrinsic charm in the proton2 have remained inconclusive. Here we provide evidence for intrinsic charm by exploiting a high-precision determination of the quark–gluon content of the nucleon3 based on machine learning and a large experimental dataset. We disentangle the intrinsic charm component from charm–anticharm pairs arising from high-energy radiation4. We establish the existence of intrinsic charm at the 3-standard-deviation level, with a momentum distribution in remarkable agreement with model predictions1,5.We confirm these findings by comparing them to very recent data on Z-boson production with charm jets from the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment6.

Extending Precision Perturbative QCD with Track Functions

Collider experiments often exploit information about the quantum numbers of final state hadrons to maximize their sensitivity, with applications ranging from the use of tracking information (electric charge) for precision jet substructure measurements, to flavor tagging for nucleon structure studies. For such measurements, perturbative calculations in terms of quarks and gluons are insufficient, and nonperturbative track functions describing the energy fraction of a quark or gluon converted into a subset of hadrons (e.g., charged hadrons) must be incorporated. Unlike fragmentation functions, track functions describe correlations between hadrons and therefore satisfy complicated nonlinear evolution equations whose structure has so far eluded calculation beyond the leading order. In this Letter, we develop an understanding of track functions and their interplay with energy flow observables beyond the leading order, allowing them to be used in state-of-the-art perturbative calculations for the first time. We identify a shift symmetry in the evolution of their moments that fixes their structure, and we explicitly compute the evolution of the first three moments at next-to-leading order, allowing for the description of up to three-point energy correlations. We then calculate the two-point energy correlator on charged particles at O(α_{s}^{2}), illustrating explicitly that infrared singularities in perturbation theory are absorbed by moments of the track functions and also highlighting how these moments seamlessly interplay with modern techniques for perturbative calculations. Our results extend the boundaries of traditional perturbative QCD, enabling precision perturbative predictions for energy flow observables sensitive to the quantum numbers of hadronic states.

Drell-Yan angular lepton distributions at small x from TMD factorization.

The Drell-Yan process is studied in the framework of TMD factorization in the Sudakov region s » Q2 » {q}_{perp}^2 corresponding to recent LHC experiments with Q2 of order of mass of Z-boson and transverse momentum of DY pair ∼ few tens GeV. The DY hadronic tensors are expressed in terms of quark and quark-gluon TMDs with frac{1}{Q^2} and frac{1}{N_c^2} accuracy. It is demonstrated that in the leading order in Nc the higher-twist quark-quark-gluon TMDs reduce to leading-twist TMDs due to QCD equation of motion. The resulting hadronic tensors depend on two leading-twist TMDs: f1 responsible for total DY cross section, and Boer-Mulders function {h}_1^{perp } . The corresponding qualitative and semi-quantitative predictions seem to agree with LHC data on five angular coefficients A0− A4 of DY pair production. The remaining three coefficients A5− A7 are determined by quark-quark-gluon TMDs multiplied by extra frac{1}{N_c} so they appear to be relatively small in accordance with LHC results.

Mystery of Bloom-Gilman duality: A light-front holographic QCD perspective

Light-front wave functions motivated by holographic constructions are used to study Bloom-Gilman duality, a feature of deep inelastic scattering. Separate expressions for structure functions in terms of quark and hadronic degrees of freedom (involving transition form factors) are presented, with an ultimate goal of obtaining a relationship between the two expressions. A specific two-parton model is defined and resonance transition form factors are computed using previously derived light-front wave functions. A new form of global duality (integral over all values of $x$ between 0 and 1) is derived from the valence quark-number sum rule. Using a complete set of hadronic states is necessary for this new global duality to be achieved, and the previous original work does not provide such a set. This feature is remedied by amending the model to include a longitudinal confining potential, and the resulting complete set is sufficient to carry out the study of Bloom-Gilman duality. Specific expressions for transition form factors are obtained and all are shown to fall as $1/{Q}^{2}$, at asymptotically large values. This is because the Feynman mechanism dominates the asymptotic behavior of the model. These transition form factors are used to assess the validity of the global and local duality sum rules, with the result that both are not satisfied within the given model. Evaluations of the hadronic expression for $q(x,{Q}^{2})$ provide more details about this lack. This result is not a failure of the current model because it shows that the observed validity of both global and local forms of duality for deep inelastic scattering must be related to a feature of QCD that is deeper than completeness. Our simple present model suggests a prediction that Bloom-Gilman duality would not be observed if deep inelastic scattering experiments were to be made on the pion. The underlying origin of the duality phenomenon in deep inelastic scattering is deeply buried within the confinement aspects of QCD, and its origin remains a mystery.

Hidden and Open Heavy-Flavor Hadronic States

We discuss the stability of hidden and open heavy-flavor hadronic states made of either two or three mesons. References are made in passing to studies regarding two and three-body systems containing baryons. We perform a comparative study analyzing the results in terms of quark and hadron degrees of freedom. Compact and molecular states are found to exist in very specific situations. We estimate the decay width for the different scenarios: weak decays for bound states by the strong interaction, and strong decays for hadronic resonances above a decay threshold. The experimental observation of narrow hadrons lying well above their lowest decay threshold is theoretically justified.

New narrow LHCb pentaquarks as lowest antiquark-diquark-diquark systems

The antiquark-diquark-diquark model describes pentaquark states both in terms of quarks and hadrons. We discuss pentaquark states with hidden charm $P(\bar c cuud)$ discovered in the $J/\Psi p$ spectrum by the LHCb collaboration. We consider three pentaquark states as members of the lowest ($S$-wave) multiplet and discuss the mass splitting scheme. The latest LHCb data for pentaquarks with hidden charm provide an opportunity to make an assumption about the diquark content of the pentaquark states. We give a classification for the LHCb pentaquarks and define recombination channels for these states.

Diffraction and photon exchange processes at the LHC and parton saturation

We present a review of the recent theoretical and experimental developments related to the field of diffraction, parton saturation, and forward physics. We first discuss our present understanding of the proton structure in terms of quarks and gluons, the degrees of freedom of quantum chromodynamics. We then focus on some of the main results on diffraction at the HERA electron–proton collider in DESY, Germany, at the Tevatron proton–antiproton collider at Fermilab, Batavia, US, and at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) proton–proton and nucleus–nucleus collider, which is located in Geneva, Switzerland. We also present a selected amount of results on diffraction and photon exchanges that can be done at the LHC experiments and at a future Electron Ion Collider (EIC) to be built in the US at Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York.

A U.S.-based Electron-Ion Collider

An Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) in USA is currently discussed as a next-generation facility for high-energy nuclear physics. The main goal of the EIC is to study fundamental questions of Quantum Chromodynamics, which include the origin of the nucleon mass and spin and the three-dimensional structure of the nucleon in terms of quarks and gluons, the emergent properties of dense systems of gluons, and influence of nuclear matter on distributions of quarks and gluons and propagation of color charges through it. The EIC machine designs are aimed at achieving variable center of mass energies of 20 – 100 GeV, upgradable to 150 GeV, high degree of polarization ( 70%) of beams of electrons, protons and light nuclei, high collision luminosity of 1033–34 cm–2s–1, and ion beams from deuteron to heaviest (Lead) nuclei. In this contribution, we present the current status of the EIC project, its physics program, and proposed designs of EIC realization.

Strong decay of Pc(4380) pentaquark in a molecular picture

There are different assumptions on the substructure of the pentaquarks Pc(4380) and Pc(4450), newly founded in J/ψN invariant mass by the LHCb Collaboration, giving consistent mass results with the experimental observations. The experimental data and recent theoretical studies on their mass suggest interpretation of these states as spin-3/2 negative-parity and spin-5/2 positive-parity pentaquarks, respectively. There may exist opposite-parity states corresponding to these particles, as well. Despite a lot of studies, however, the nature and internal organization of these pentaquarks in terms of quarks and gluons are not clear. To this end we need more theoretical investigations on other physical properties of these states. In this accordance, we study a strong and dominant decay of the Pc(4380) to J/ψ and N in the framework of three point QCD sum rule method. An interpolating current in a molecular form is applied to calculate six strong coupling form factors defining the transitions of the positive and negative parity spin-3/2 pentaquark states. The values of the coupling constants are used in the calculation of the decay widths of these transitions. The obtained results are compared with the existing experimental data.

PARTONS: PARtonic Tomography Of Nucleon Software

We describe the architecture and functionalities of a C++ software framework, coined PARTONS, dedicated to the phenomenology of Generalized Parton Distributions. These distributions describe the three-dimensional structure of hadrons in terms of quarks and gluons, and can be accessed in deeply exclusive lepto- or photo-production of mesons or photons. PARTONS provides a necessary bridge between models of Generalized Parton Distributions and experimental data collected in various exclusive production channels. We outline the specification of the PARTONS framework in terms of practical needs, physical content and numerical capacity. This framework will be useful for physicists – theorists or experimentalists – not only to develop new models, but also to interpret existing measurements and even design new experiments.

Perturbative study of the QCD phase diagram for heavy quarks at nonzero chemical potential: Two-loop corrections

We extend a previous investigation of the QCD phase diagram with heavy quarks in the context of background field methods by including the two-loop corrections to the background field effective potential. The nonperturbative dynamics in the pure-gauge sector is modeled by a phenomenological gluon mass term in the Landau-DeWitt gauge-fixed action, which results in an improved perturbative expansion. We investigate the phase diagram at nonzero temperature and (real or imaginary) chemical potential. Two-loop corrections yield an improved agreement with lattice data as compared to the leading-order results. We also compare with the results of nonperturbative approaches. We further study the equation of state as well as the thermodynamic stability of the system at two-loop order. Finally, we show, using simple thermodynamic arguments, that the behavior of the Polyakov loops as functions of the chemical potential complies with their interpretation in terms of quark and anti-quark free energies.

Narrow pentaquarks as diquark–diquark–antiquark systems

The diquark–diquark–antiquark model describes pentaquark states both in terms of quarks and hadrons. The latest LHCb data for pentaquarks with open charm emphasize the importance of hadron components in the structure of pentaquarks. We discuss pentaquark states with hidden charm [Formula: see text] and those with open charm [Formula: see text] which were discovered recently in LHCb data ([Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] spectra correspondingly). Considering the observed states as members of the lowest ([Formula: see text]-wave) multiplet, we discuss the mass splitting of states and the dumping of their widths.

Study of the Few Nucleon Systems at CLAS

The study of few nucleon systems with electromagnetic probes is an essential component of the scientific program carried out at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab). Here we present measurements of exclusive reactions on light nuclei using real photon beams with energies up to 3 GeV and the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS), a nearly 4pi magnetic spectrometer, in order to study the properties of strongly interacting matter and the transition from hadronic (i.e in terms of nucleons and mesons) to partonic (in terms of quark and gluons) degrees of freedom in nuclear interactions. We discuss the progress made in understanding the relevant degrees of freedom using polarisation observables and cross sections of deuteron and ^3He photodisintegration in the few-GeV photon-energy region. In addition, recent high-statistics experiments with the CLAS detector have provided us with sufficient counting rates to study the effects of initial- and final-state interactions in reactions off the deuteron. Such data allow us to extract a large set of polarisation observables for final-state interactions in hyperon photoproduction and to study the properties of the hyperon–nucleon interaction. Initial-state effects are studied by mapping the dependence of experimental observables on the spectator-nucleon momentum. We also present recent results for polarisation observables for quasi-free K^+varLambda off the bound proton in a deuteron as well as for final-state interactions in the reaction gamma drightarrow K^+varLambda n, and will discuss their impact on hyperon–nucleon studies.

Light Meson Decay with Gaussian Confinement in a JKJ Decay Model

A form to describe hadron strong decays is in terms of quark and gluon degrees of freedom in microscopic decay models. Initially we assume that strong decays are driven by the same inter-quark Hamiltonian which determines the spectrum, and that it incorporates gaussian confinement. An [Formula: see text] decay matrix element of the JKJ Hamiltonian involves a pair-production current matrix elements times a scattering matrix element. Diagrammatically this corresponds to an interaction between an initial line and produced pair. In this work we apply the model to the light meson sector and calculate the decay rate, comparing with the experimental values.

Investigating GPDs in the framework of the double distribution model

In this paper, we construct the generalized parton distribution (GPD) in terms of the kinematical variables [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text], using the double distribution model. By employing these functions, we could extract some quantities which makes it possible to gain a three-dimensional insight into the nucleon structure function at the parton level. The main objective of GPDs is to combine and generalize the concepts of ordinary parton distributions and form factors. They also provide an exclusive framework to describe the nucleons in terms of quarks and gluons. Here, we first calculate, in the Double Distribution model, the GPD based on the usual parton distributions arising from the GRV and CTEQ phenomenological models. Obtaining quarks and gluons angular momenta from the GPD, we would be able to calculate the scattering observables which are related to spin asymmetries of the produced quarkonium. These quantities are represented by [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]. We also calculate the Pauli and Dirac form factors in deeply virtual Compton scattering. Finally, in order to compare our results with the existing experimental data, we use the difference of the polarized cross-section for an initial longitudinal leptonic beam and unpolarized target particles [Formula: see text]. In all cases, our obtained results are in good agreement with the available experimental data.

Long-distance weak annihilation contribution to theB±→(π±,K±)ℓ+ℓ−decays

We propose an alternative evaluation of the long-distance weak annihilation (WA, also called one-photon exchange in this paper) contribution to the rare semileptonic $B^{\pm}\to (\pi^{\pm},K^{\pm})\ell^+\ell^-$ ($\ell=e,\,\mu$) decays. This hadronic description at low energies is matched at intermediate energies to its short-distance counterpart in terms of quark and gluon degrees of freedom. Although the WA contribution does not contribute to solve the possible breaking of lepton-universality observed by LHCb in the $B^{\pm}\to K^{\pm}(\mu^+\mu^-/e^+e^-)$ ratio, nor provides an important hadronic contamination to their decay rates, its contribution to the branching ratios (and direct CP asymmetry) of the $B^{\pm}\to \pi^{\pm}\ell^+\ell^-$ transitions turns out to be significant. This hadronic pollution should be taken into account when looking for new physics effects in decays into pions, which suggests to restrict these searches to squared lepton-pair invariant mass in the $(1,8)$ GeV$^2$ range. The interference of the one-photon exchange contribution with the dominant short-distance one-loop amplitude induces a sizable CP asymmetry in these rare decays, which calls for dedicated measurements.

Heavy vector and axial-vector mesons in hot and dense asymmetric strange hadronic matter

We calculate the effects of finite density and temperature of isospin asymmetric strange hadronic matter, for different strangeness fractions, on the in-medium properties of vector $\left( D^{\ast}, D_{s}^{\ast}, B^{\ast}, B_{s}^{\ast}\right)$ and axial-vector $\left( D_{1}, D_{1s}, B_{1}, B_{1s}\right)$ mesons, using chiral hadronic SU(3) model and QCD sum rules. We focus on the evaluation of in-medium mass-shift and shift in decay constant of above vector and axial-vector mesons. In QCD sum rule approach, the properties, e.g., the masses and decay constants of vector and axial-vector mesons are written in terms of quark and gluon condensates. These quark and gluon condensates are evaluated in the present work within chiral SU(3) model, through the medium modification of, scalar-isoscalar fields $\sigma$ and $\zeta$, the scalar-isovector field $\delta$ and scalar dilaton field $\chi$, in the strange hadronic medium which includes both nucleons as well as hyperons. As we shall see in detail, the masses and decay constants of heavy vector and axial-vector mesons are affected significantly due to isospin asymmetry and strangeness fraction of the medium and these modifications may influence the experimental observables produced in heavy ion collision experiments. The results of present investigations of in-medium properties of vector and axial-vector mesons at finite density and temperature of strange hadronic medium may be helpful for understanding the experimental data from heavy-ion collision experiments in-particular for the Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment of FAIR facility at GSI, Germany.

Deep inelastic scattering with the SPS muon beam

We review results from deep inelastic muon scattering experiments at the SPS which started in 1978, and are still actively pursued today. Key results include the precision measurement of scaling violations and of the strong coupling constant, spin-dependent structure functions, and studies of the internal spin structure of protons and neutrons. These experiments have revealed a wealth of details about the internal structure of nucleons in terms of quarks and gluons.

Proton structure and the PHENIX experiment

We briefly summarize the important and critical roles that PHENIX Experiment has played in determining the proton's internal structure in terms of quarks and gluons, and their dynamics. Some pioneering measurements by PHENIX Experiment on the motion and polarization of quarks and gluons, as well as their correlations inside a fast moving proton are presented. Some future opportunities and potentials of PHENIX Experiment are also discussed.