We propose a new approach to describe baryonic structure in terms of an effective chiral Lagrangian. The state vector of a baryon is defined on the light front of general position ω. x=0, where ωis an arbitrary light-like four vector. It is then decomposed in Fock components including an increasing number of pions. The maximal number of particles in the state vector is mapped out to the order of decomposition of the chiral effective Lagrangian to have a consistent calculation of both the state vector and the effective Lagrangian. An adequate Fock sector dependent renormalization scheme is used in order to restrict all contributions within the truncated Fock space. To illustrate our formalism, we calculate the anomalous magnetic moment of a fermion in the Yukawa model in the three-body truncation. We present perspectives opened by the use of a new regularization scheme based on the properties of fields as distributions acting on specific test functions.
We present an analytically solvable 3D light-front Hamiltonian model for hadrons that extends light-front holography by including finite mass quarks and a longitudinal confinement term. We propose that the model is suitable as an improved analytic approximation to QCD at a low resolution scale. We demonstrate that it preserves desired Lorentz symmetries and it produces improved agreement with the experimental mass spectroscopy and other properties of the light mesons. Importantly, the model also respects chiral symmetry and the Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner relation.
We explore the link between the chiral symmetry of QCD and the numerical results of the light-front quark model, analyzing both the two-point and three-point functions of the pion. Including the axial-vector coupling as well as the pseudoscalar coupling in the light-front quark model, we discuss the implication of the chiral anomaly in describing the pion decay constant, the pion-photon transition form factor and the electromagnetic form factor of the pion. In constraining the model parameters, we find that the chiral anomaly plays a critical role and the analysis of $F_{πγ}(Q^2)$ in timelike …
Transverse densities describe the spatial distribution of electromagnetic current in the nucleon at fixed light-front time. At peripheral distances b = O(M_pi^{-1}) the densities are governed by chiral dynamics and can be calculated model-independently using chiral effective field theory (EFT). Recent work has shown that the EFT results can be represented in first-quantized form, as overlap integrals of chiral light-front wave functions describing the transition of the nucleon to soft-pion-nucleon intermediate states, resulting in a quantum-mechanical picture of the peripheral transverse densi…
Self-consistent covariant description of vector meson decay constants and chirality-even quark-antiquark distribution amplitudes up to twist-3 in the light-front quark model
We study the nucleon's partonic angular momentum (AM) content at peripheral transverse distances $b = \mathcal{O}(M_π^{-1})$, where the structure is governed by chiral dynamics. We compute the nucleon form factors of the energy-momentum tensor in chiral effective field theory (ChEFT) and construct the transverse densities of AM at fixed light-front time. In the periphery the spin density is suppressed, and the AM is predominantly orbital. In the first-quantized representation of ChEFT in light-front form, the field-theoretical AM density coincides with the quantum-mechanical orbital AM density…
The lightest meson, the pion, features two faces -- one is the elementary Goldstone boson of QCD and the other is the structured bound state of quarks and gluons. To accommodate both in a single light-front wave function in the valence space, we obtain a sum rule by analyzing the conserved axial-vector current and the general structures of the wave functions. Using an analytic model motivated by holography, we show this sum rule is consistent with requirements of chiral symmetry breaking in AdS/QCD. Within this model, we find a remarkable feature of the pion, namely that the density is mostly …
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 Ho…
The light-quark flavor dependence of the proton sea has been of great interest for many years because of its close connection with non-perturbative effects. One hypothesis is that this dependence arises from the pion cloud of the proton. We apply light cone perturbation theory and experimental constraints to a chiral Lagrangian to compute the relevant Fock-space components of the nucleon wave function with well-defined uncertainties. Existing experimental information regarding the light flavor sea is studied, and predictions for future experimental results are provided. Future experiments have…
We investigate the structure of the light meson with one dynamical gluon from the light-front QCD Hamiltonian, determined for their constituent quark-antiquark and quark-antiquark-gluon Fock sectors, together with a three-dimensional confinement. After fitting the light meson mass spectroscopy, the light-front wave functions provide a good quality description of the pion electromagnetic form factor, and the valence quark distribution functions following QCD scale evolution.
This lecture note is written for 'Courses on Light-Cone Techniques applied to QCD', Nov 21-25, 2022, IGFAE. It is intended to provide basic knowledge and selective perspectives on the application of light-front Hamiltonian approach to mesons in two 1.5-hour lectures.
We study the heavy-light mesons within basis light-front quantization. The resulting mass spectra of $D$, $D_s$, $B$, and $B_s$ agree reasonably well with experiments. We also predict states which could be measured in the near future. In the light-front formalism, we calculate the light-front wave functions and additional experimental observables, such as parton distribution functions, distribution amplitudes, and decay constants by means of integrations over light-front wave functions. We also provide ratios of decay constants for selected pseudoscalar meson decays ($D_s$ to $D$ and $B_s$ to …
We discuss the equivalence between light-front time-ordered-perturbation theory and covariant quantum field theory in light-front quantization, in the case of quantum electrodynamics at one-loop level. In particular, we review the one-loop calculation of the vertex correction, fermion self-energy and vacuum polarization. We apply the procedure of integration by residue over the light-front energy in the loop to show how the perturbative expansion in covariant terms can be reduced to a sum of propagating and instantaneous diagrams of light-front time-ordered perturbation theory. The detailed pr…
We investigate the two-photon transitions $H_{c\bar c} \to γ^*γ$ of the charmonium system in light-front dynamics. The light-front wave functions were obtained from solving the effective Hamiltonian based on light-front holography and one-gluon exchange interaction within the basis light-front quantization approach. We compute the two-photon transition form factors as well as the two-photon decay widths for S- and P-wave charmonia, $η_c$ and $χ_{cJ}$ and their excitations. Without introducing any free parameters, our predictions are in good agreement with the recent experimental measurements b…
We apply the basis light front quantization (BLFQ) approach to describe the valence structures of the charged light meson ground states. Specifically, the light front wavefunctions of $π^\pm$, $ρ^\pm$, $K^\pm$, and $K^{*\pm}$ are obtained as the eigenvectors of the light front effective Hamiltonians with confinement potentials supplemented by the color singlet Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (NJL) interactions. We adjust our model such that the spectrum of these ground states and the charge radii of the pseudoscalar states agree with experimental results. We present the elastic form factors and parton dis…
We investigate the unequal mass relativistic bound state system, the $B_c$ mesons, in a light-front Hamiltonian formalism. We adopt an effective Hamiltonian based on soft-wall light-front holography, together with a longitudinal confinement that was first introduced for heavy quarkonium. We also include the one gluon-exchange interaction with a running coupling, which produces the spin structure. We present the mass spectrum and light-front wave functions. We also use the light-front wave functions to calculate decay constants, charge and momentum densities, as well as distribution amplitudes.…
Poincare' covariant definitions for the spin-dependent spectral function and for the momentum distributions within the light-front Hamiltonian dynamics are proposed for a three-fermion bound system, starting from the light-front wave function of the system. The adopted approach is based on the Bakamjian-Thomas construction of the Poincare' generators, that allows one to easily import the familiar and wide knowledge on the nuclear interaction into a light-front framework. The proposed formalism can find useful applications in refined nuclear calculations, like the ones needed for evaluating the…
The parton distribution functions (PDFs) of heavy mesons are evaluated from their light-front wave functions, which are obtained from a basis light-front quantization in the leading Fock sector representation. We consider the mass eigenstates from an effective Hamiltonian consisting of the confining potential adopted from light-front holography in the transverse direction, a longitudinal confinement, and a one-gluon exchange interaction with running coupling. We present the gluon and the sea quark PDFs which we generate dynamically from the QCD evolution of the valence quark distributions.
We study heavy quarkonium within the light-front Hamiltonian formalism. Our effective Hamiltonian is based on the holographic QCD confining potential and the one-gluon exchange interaction with a running coupling. The obtained spectra are compared with experimental measurements. We present a set of light-front wave functions, which exhibit rich structure and are consistent with the nonrelativistic picture. Finally, we use the wave functions to compute the charge and mass radii.
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 $N_c$ 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.
A general procedure for obtaining frame-independent, three-dimensional light-front coordinate-space wave functions is introduced. The third spatial coordinate, $\tilde z$ , is the frame independent coordinate conjugate to the light-front momentum coordinate $x={k^+\over P^+}$ which appears in the momentum-space light-front wave functions underlying generalized parton distributions, structure functions, distribution amplitudes, form factors, and other hadronic observables. These causal light-front coordinate-space wave functions are used to derive a general expression for the quark distribution…
Convergence in charmonium structure: light-front wave functions from basis light-front quantization and Dyson-Schwinger equations
University of Science & Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）；Anhui Center for Fundamental Sciences in Theoretical Physics（安徽基础前沿与交叉科学研究中心）；Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics（南京航空航天大学）；Iowa State University（爱荷华州立大学）；Anhui University of Science and Technology（安徽理工大学）
Light-front wave functions play a fundamental role in the light-front quantization approach to QCD and hadron structure. However, a naive implementation of the light-front quantization suffers from various subtleties including the well-known zero-mode problem, the associated rapidity divergences which mixes ultra-violet divergences with infrared physics, as well as breaking of spatial rotational symmetry. We advocate that the light-front quantization should be viewed as an effective theory in which small $k^+$ modes have been effectively ``integrated out'', with an infinite number of renormali…
