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Total Gluon Helicity Contribution to the Proton Spin from Lattice QCD

High Energy Physics - Lattice 2026-01-19 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Theory Nuclear Experiment Nuclear Theory

Abstract

We report a state-of-the-art lattice QCD calculation of the total gluon helicity contribution to the proton spin, ΔG\Delta G. The calculation is done on ensembles with three different lattice spacings a={0.08,0.09,0.11}a=\{0.08, 0.09, 0.11\} fm. By employing distillation and momentum smearing for proton external states, we extract the bare matrix elements of the topological current KμK^\mu using 5-HYP smeared Coulomb gauge fixing configurations. Furthermore, we apply a non-perturbative RI/MOM\mathrm{RI/MOM} renormalization scheme augmented by the Cluster Decomposition Error Reduction (CDER) technique to determine the renormalization constants of KμK^\mu. The results obtained from different components Kt,iK^{t,i} (with ii being the direction of proton momentum or polarization) are consistent with Lorentz covariance within uncertainties. After extrapolating to the continuum limit, ΔG\Delta G is found to be ΔG=0.231(17)sta.(44)sym.\Delta G = 0.231(17)^{\mathrm{sta.}}(44)^{\mathrm{sym.}} at the MS\overline{\mathrm{MS}} scale μ2=10 GeV2{\mu}^2=10\ \mathrm{GeV}^2, which constitutes approximately 46(9)%46(9)\% of the proton spin.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.24315,
  title  = {Total Gluon Helicity Contribution to the Proton Spin from Lattice QCD},
  author = {Dian-Jun Zhao and Long Chen and Hongxin Dong and Xiangdong Ji and Liuming Liu and Zhuoyi Pang and Andreas Schäfer and Peng Sun and Yi-Bo Yang and Jian-Hui Zhang and Shiyi Zhong},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.24315},
  year   = {2026}
}