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Orbital Angular Momentum Small-$x$ Evolution: Exact Results in the Large-$N_c$ Limit

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2024-09-11 v4 High Energy Physics - Experiment Nuclear Experiment Nuclear Theory

Abstract

We construct an exact solution to the revised small-xx orbital angular momentum (OAM) evolution equations derived recently, based on an earlier work. These equations are derived in the double logarithmic approximation (summing powers of αsln2(1/x)\alpha_s \ln^2(1/x) with αs\alpha_s the strong coupling constant and xx the Bjorken xx variable) and the large-NcN_c limit, with NcN_c the number of quark colors. From our solution, we extract the small-xx, large-NcN_c expressions of the quark and gluon OAM distributions. Additionally, we determine the large-NcN_c small-xx asymptotics of the OAM distributions to be \begin{align} \notag L_{q+\bar{q}}(x,Q^2) \sim L_G(x,Q^2) \sim \Delta \Sigma (x,Q^2) \sim \Delta G(x,Q^2) \sim \left(\frac{1}{x} \right)^{\alpha_h}, \end{align} with the intercept αh\alpha_h the same as obtained in the small-xx helicity evolution, which can be approximated as αh3.66074αsNc2π\alpha_h \approx 3.66074 \sqrt{\frac{\alpha_s N_c}{2\pi}}. This result is in complete agreement with the literature. Additionally, we calculate the ratio of the quark and gluon OAM distributions to the flavor-singlet quark and gluon helicity parton distribution functions respectively in the small-xx region.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2401.05508,
  title  = {Orbital Angular Momentum Small-$x$ Evolution: Exact Results in the Large-$N_c$ Limit},
  author = {Brandon Manley},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.05508},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

27 pages, 2 figures; v2: typos corrected, references added, appendix C modified, 22 pages, 2 figures. Signs corrected, discussion expanded; v4: typos corrected

R2 v1 2026-06-28T14:13:42.504Z