Work

Transverse force tomography inside a proton from basis light-front quantization

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: The twist-3 transverse spin-dependent nucleon structure function g 2 arises in high-energy processes involving a transversely polarized nucleon. Its connection to quark-gluon correlations allows for an interpretation in terms of the average transverse color Lorentz force acting on unpolarized quarks inside a transversely polarized nucleon. In this work, we investigate this force using light-front wave functions obtained by diagonalizing the light-front Hamiltonian with quantum chromodynamics inputs within the basis light-front quantization approach. We evolve our results to a common scale of 5 GeV 2 and present the corresponding form factors in momentum space as well as the transverse force components in impact-parameter space. These distributions provide a complementary perspective on the Sivers asymmetry in transversely polarized deep-inelastic scattering. In the forward limit, we extract the twist-3 reduced matrix element d 2 , and our results are found to be comparable with those from other theoretical calculations and experimental determinations.

Source: Physical review. D/Physical review. D.

DOI: 10.1103/sk7p-w8mg

Authors: Ziqi Zhang, Chandan Mondal, Siqi Xu, Xingbo Zhao, James P. Vary

Institutions: Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Modern Physics, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Iowa State University

Language: English

Topic: Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions

Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid