https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-023-12119-0
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Unpolarized transverse-momentum dependent distribution functions of a quark in a pion with Minkowskian dynamics
1
Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, DCTA, 12228-900, São José dos Campos, Brazil
2
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Roma, P.le A. Moro 2, 00185, Rome, Italy
Received:
7
June
2023
Accepted:
9
October
2023
Published online:
31
October
2023
The unpolarized twist-2 (leading) and twist-3 (subleading), T-even, transverse-momentum dependent quark distributions in the pion are evaluated for the first time by using the actual solution of a dynamical equation in Minkowski space. The adopted theoretical framework is based on the 4D homogeneous Bethe–Salpeter integral equation with an interaction kernel given by a one-gluon exchange, featuring an extended quark-gluon vertex. The masses of quark and gluon as well as the interaction-vertex scale have been chosen in a range suggested by lattice-QCD calculations, and calibrated to reproduce both pion mass and decay constant. The sum rules to be fulfilled by the transverse-momentum dependent distributions are carefully investigated, particularly the leading-twist one, that has to match the collinear parton distribution function, and hence can be scrutinized in terms of existing data as well as theoretical predictions. Noteworthy, the joint use of the Fock expansion of the pion state facilitates an in-depth analysis of the content of the pion Bethe–Salpeter amplitude, allowing to calculate the gluon contribution to the quark average longitudinal fraction, that results to be 
. The current analysis highlights the role of the gluon exchanges through quantitative analysis of collinear and transverse-momentum distributions, showing, e.g. for both leading and subleading-twists, an early departure from the widely adopted exponential fall-off, for 
, with the quark mass 
.
© The Author(s) 2023
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
