Heavy-quark mass effects in off-light-cone distributions

Abstract We compute the one-loop correction to the forward matrix element of an off-light-cone bi-local quark correlator characterised by a space-like separation $$z^2$$ z 2 in the presence of heavy quarks with mass m. This calculation allows us to extract the one-loop matching kernel, necessary to...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Valerio Bertone, Michael Fucilla, Cédric Mezrag
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SpringerOpen 2025-08-01
Series:European Physical Journal C: Particles and Fields
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-14575-2
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Summary:Abstract We compute the one-loop correction to the forward matrix element of an off-light-cone bi-local quark correlator characterised by a space-like separation $$z^2$$ z 2 in the presence of heavy quarks with mass m. This calculation allows us to extract the one-loop matching kernel, necessary to connect quasi- and pseudo-distributions to collinear parton distribution functions (PDFs), accounting for heavy-quark mass effects. Our result is exact in that it includes all powers of $$z^2m^2$$ z 2 m 2 at one loop. In the limit $$z^2m^2\rightarrow 0$$ z 2 m 2 → 0 , it consistently reduces to the known massless result. We also carry out a numerical implementation of our expressions, which allows us to compute the charm pseudo-distribution of the proton given its PDFs. We finally comment on the quantitative impact of heavy-quark mass corrections.
ISSN:1434-6052