QCD phenomena and the light-cone wavefunctions of hadrons

Conference · Mon Jun 01 04:00:00 EDT 1998

OSTI ID:666129

Brodsky, S J

Light-cone Fock-state wavefunctions encode the properties of a hadron in terms of its fundamental quark and gluon degrees of freedom. A recent experiment at Fermilab, E791, demonstrates that the color coherence and shape of light-cone wavefunctions in longitudinal momentum fraction can be directly measured by the high energy diffractive jet dissociation of hadrons on nuclei. Given the proton's light-cone wavefunctions, one can compute not only the quark and gluon distributions measured in deep inelastic lepton-proton scattering, but also the multi-parton correlations which control the distribution of particles in the proton fragmentation region and dynamical higher twist effects. First-principle predictions can be made for structure functions at small and large light-cone momentum fraction x. Light-cone wavefunctions also provide a systematic framework for evaluating exclusive hadronic matrix elements, including timelike heavy hadron decay amplitudes and form factors. In principle, light-cone wavefunctions can be computed in nonperturbative QCD by diagonalizing the light-cone Hamiltonian using the DLCQ method, as in dimensionally reduced collinear QCD.

• Research Organization: Stanford Univ., Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, CA (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Research, Washington, DC (US)
• DOE Contract Number: AC03-76SF00515
• OSTI ID: 666129
• Report Number(s): SLAC-PUB--7870; CONF-980481--; ON: DE98059249
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
DECAY AMPLITUDES
DEGREES OF FREEDOM
FORM FACTORS
GLUONS
HADRONS
LIGHT CONE
LONGITUDINAL MOMENTUM
MATRIX ELEMENTS
PROTONS
QUANTUM CHROMODYNAMICS
QUARKS
STRUCTURE FUNCTIONS