Nucleon Transversity Distribution in the Continuum and Physical Mass Limit from Lattice QCD

Fei Yao, Lisa Walter, Jiunn-Wei Chen*, Jun Hua, Xiangdong Ji, Luchang Jin, Sebastian Lahrtz, Lingquan Ma, Protick Mohanta, Andreas Schäfer, Hai-Tao Shu, Yushan Su, Peng Sun, Xiaonu Xiong, Yi-Bo Yang, and Jian-Hui Zhang (Lattice Parton Collaboration)
Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 261901 (2023)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.261901

How the proton’s spin and momentum are distributed among quarks and gluons can be precisely described in the language of Feynman’s parton distributions. Computing these distributions from the first principle of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is a holy grail in theoretical physics, made possible using the large-momentum effective theory (LaMET) proposed by X. Ji in 2013. Chen and collaborators report a state-of-the-art lattice QCD calculation of the isovector quark transversity distribution of the proton using LaMET. This distribution of transversely polarized quarks with momentum fraction x viewed in the proton infinite momentum frame is compared with recent global analyses from experimental data.