Tomography of pions and protons via transverse momentum dependent distributions

Jefferson Lab Angular Momentum (JAM) Collaboration

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

We perform the first simultaneous extraction of parton collinear and transverse degrees of freedom from low-energy fixed-target Drell-Yan data in order to compare the transverse momentum dependent (TMD) parton distribution functions (PDFs) of the pion and proton. We demonstrate that the transverse separation of the quark field encoded in TMDs of the pion is more than 4σ smaller than that of the proton. Additionally, we find the transverse separation of the quark field decreases as its longitudinal momentum fraction decreases. In studying the nuclear modification of TMDs, we find clear evidence for a transverse EMC effect. We comment on possible explanations for these intriguing behaviors, which call for a deeper examination of tomography in a variety of strongly interacting quark-gluon systems.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article numberL091504
JournalPhysical Review D
Volume108
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 1 2023

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Nuclear and High Energy Physics

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