We report on our exploratory study for the direct evaluation of the parton distribution functions from lattice QCD, based on a recently proposed new approach. We present encouraging results using N f ¼ 2 þ 1 þ 1 twisted mass fermions with a pion mass of about 370 MeV. The focus of this work is a detailed description of the computation, including the lattice calculation, the matching to an infinite momentum and the nucleon mass correction. In addition, we test the effect of gauge link smearing in the operator to estimate the influence of the Wilson line renormalization, which is yet to be done.

In this work we present, for the first time, the non-perturbative renormalization for the unpolarized, helicity and transversity quasi-PDFs, in an RI' scheme. The proposed prescription addresses simultaneously all aspects of renormalization: logarithmic divergences, finite renormalization as well as the linear divergence which is present in the matrix elements of fermion operators with Wilson lines. Furthermore, for the case of the unpolarized quasi-PDFs, we describe how to eliminate the unwanted mixing with the twist-3 scalar operator. We utilize perturbation theory for the one-loop conversion factor that brings the renormalization functions to the MS-scheme at a scale of 2 GeV. We also explain how to improve the estimates on the renormalization functions by eliminating lattice artifacts. The latter can be computed in one-loop perturbation theory and to all orders in the lattice spacing. We apply the methodology for the renormalization to an ensemble of twisted mass fermions with Nf=2+1+1 dynamical light quarks, and a pion mass of around 375 MeV.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures, 2 Tables, Section 3 largely expanded compared to v1. Version accepted for publication in Nucl. Phys. B (invited Frontiers Article

We provide an analysis of the x dependence of the bare unpolarized, helicity, and transversity isovector parton distribution functions (PDFs) from lattice calculations employing (maximally) twisted mass fermions. The x dependence of the calculated PDFs resembles the one of the phenomenological parameterizations, a feature that makes this approach very promising. Furthermore, we apply momentum smearing for the relevant matrix elements to compute the lattice PDFs and find a large improvement factor when compared to conventional Gaussian smearing. This allows us to extend the lattice computation of the distributions to higher values of the nucleon momentum, which is essential for the prospects of a reliable extraction of the PDFs in the future.

We determine within lattice QCD the nucleon spin carried by valence and sea quarks and gluons. The calculation is performed using an ensemble of gauge configurations with two degenerate light quarks with mass fixed to approximately reproduce the physical pion mass. We find that the total angular momentum carried by the quarks in the nucleon is J uþdþs ¼ 0.408ð61Þ stat ð48Þ syst and the gluon contribution is J g ¼ 0.133ð11Þ stat ð14Þ syst , giving a total of J N ¼ 0.54ð6Þ stat ð5Þ syst that is consistent with the spin sum. For the quark intrinsic spin contribution, we obtain 1 2 ΔΣ uþdþs ¼ 0.201ð17Þ stat ð5Þ syst . All quantities are given in the modified minimal subtraction scheme at 2 GeV. The quark and gluon momentum fractions are also computed and add up to hxi uþdþs þ hxi g ¼ 0.804ð121Þ stat ð95Þ syst þ 0.267ð12Þ stat ð10Þ syst ¼ 1.07ð12Þ stat ð10Þ syst , thus satisfying the momentum sum. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.142002 Introduction.-The distribution of the proton spin among its constituent quarks and gluons has been a long-standing puzzle ever since the European Muon Collaboration showed in 1987 that only a fraction of the proton spin is carried by the quarks [1,2]. This was in sharp contrast to what one expected based on the quark model. This socalled proton spin crisis triggered rich experimental and theoretical activity. Recent experiments show that only 30% of the proton spin is carried by the quarks [3], while experiments at RHIC [4,5] on the determination of the gluon polarization in the proton point to a nonzero contribution [6]. A global fit to the most recent experimental data that includes the combined set of inclusive deep-inelastic scattering data from HERA and Drell-Yan data from Tevatron and LHC led to an improved determination of the valence quark distributions and the flavor separation of the up and down quarks [7]. The combined HERA data also provide improved constraints on the gluon distributions, but large uncertainties remain [7]. Obtaining the quark and gluon contributions to the nucleon spin and momentum fraction within lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) provides an independent input that is extremely crucial, but the computation is very challenging. This is because a complete determination must include, besides the valence, sea quark and gluon contributions that exhibit a large noise-to-signal ratio and are computationally very demanding. A first computation of the gluon spin was performed recently via the evaluation of the gluon helicity in a mixed action approach of overlap valence quarks on N f ¼ 2 þ 1 domain wall fermions that included an ensemble with pion mass 139 MeV [8]. In this Letter, we evaluate

We present a detailed study of the helicity-dependent and helicity-independent collinear parton distribution functions (PDFs) of the nucleon, using the quasi-PDF approach. The lattice QCD computation is performed employing twisted mass fermions with a physical value of the light quark mass. We give a systematic and in-depth account of the salient features entering in the evaluation of quasi-PDFs and their relation to the light-cone PDFs. In particular, we give details for the computation of the matrix elements, including the study of the various sources of systematic uncertainties, such as excited states contamination. In addition, we discuss the non-perturbative renormalization scheme used here and its systematics, effects of truncating the Fourier transform and different matching prescriptions. Finally, we show improved results for the PDFs and discuss future directions, challenges and prospects for evaluating precisely PDFs from lattice QCD with fully quantified uncertainties. arXiv:1902.00587v1 [hep-lat] 1 Feb 2019of the theoretical and numerical developments, see Ref.[33].On more general grounds, it is very important to realize that quasi-PDFs and light-cone PDFs have been shown to share the same infrared physics [34,35], which is the fundamental observation that allows one to relate both quantities using perturbation theory, provided that the hadron is moving with a large, although necessarily finite, momentum in a chosen spatial direction. It has also been proven that quasi-PDFs can be extracted from lattice QCD in Euclidean spacetime [35] and that they do not suffer from power-divergent mixings with lower-dimensional operators [36][37][38]. A factorization formula makes it possible to extract the PDFs from the quasi-PDFs, an operation called matching [19,20,29,31,34,[39][40][41][42][43]. In general, this procedure is based on a newly developed large-momentum effective theory (LaMET) [44], and it is renormalizable to all orders in perturbation theory [45][46][47][48]. Other approaches for a direct computation of the x-dependence of PDFs include the hadronic tensor [49][50][51], fictitious heavy quark [52], auxiliary light quark [53], good lattice cross sections [54,55] (closely related to the auxiliary light quark method), "OPE without OPE" [56] and pseudo-PDFs [57][58][59][60], where the latter can be seen as a generalization of PDFs off the light-cone. These alternative approaches have been explored in lattice QCD, and recent results can be found in Refs. [38,56,[61][62][63][64][65][66][67]. The new formulation and its successful implementation within lattice QCD has also led to a wider interest on phenomenological studies using models and toy theories of QCD [57,58,[68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75]. A detailed overview of the current status of lattice QCD calculation of PDFs and other partonic distributions can be found in the recent reviews of Refs. [33,76].The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: In Sec. II, we provide the general theoretical aspects, lattice QCD action and parameters. We di...