More on large-momentum effective theory approach to parton physics

Abstract

Large-Momentum Effective Theory (or LaMET) advocated by the present authors provides a direct approach to simulate parton physics in Euclidean lattice QCD theory. Recently, there has been much interest in this theory in the literature, with some questioning its validity and effectiveness. Here we provide some discussions aiming at a further exposition of this approach. In particular, we explain why it does not have the usual power divergence problem in lattice QCD calculations for the moments of parton distributions. The only power divergence in the LaMET approach comes from the self-energy of the Wilson lines which can be properly factorized. We show that although the Ioffe-time distribution provides an alternative way to extract the parton distribution from the same lattice observables, it also requires the same large momentum (or short distance) limit as in LaMET to obtain a precision calculation. With a proper quantification of errors, both extraction methods shall be compared with the same lattice data.