Pretzelosity $h_{1T}^{\perp }$ and quark orbital angular momentum

Abstract

We calculate the pretzelosity distribution ($h_{1T}^{\perp }$), which is one of the eight leading twist transverse momentum dependent parton distributions (TMDs), in the light-cone formalism. We find that this quantity has a simple relation with the quark orbital angular momentum distribution, thus it may provide a new possibility to access the quark orbital angular momentum inside the nucleon. The pretzelosity distribution can manifest itself through the $\sin (3{\varphi }_h-{\varphi }_S)$ asymmetry in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering process. We calculate the $\sin (3{\varphi }_h-{\varphi }_S)$ asymmetry at HERMES, COMPASS and JLab kinematics, and present our prediction on different targets including the proton, deuteron and neutron targets. Inclusion of transverse momentum cut in data analysis could significantly enhance the $\sin (3{\varphi }_h-{\varphi }_S)$ asymmetry for future measurements.

20 latex pages, 7 figures, to appear in PRD

References in corpus (4)

• Light-Front Holography: A First Approximation to QCD
• Transverse-momentum distributions in a diquark spectator model
• Reply to the Comment on "Spin and orbital angular momentum in gauge theories: Nucleon spin structure and multipole radiation revisited" [PRL 100:232002 (2008)]
• Spin and orbital angular momentum in gauge theories: Nucleon spin structure and multipole radiation revisited

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Azimuthal spin asymmetries in light-cone constituent quark models
• Transverse momentum dependent distribution functions in a covariant parton model approach with quark orbital motion