Flavor decomposition of the nucleon unpolarized, helicity, and transversity parton distribution functions from lattice QCD simulations

Abstract

We present results on the quark unpolarized, helicity and transversity parton distributions functions of the nucleon. We use the quasiparton distribution approach within the lattice QCD framework and perform the computation using an ensemble of twisted mass fermions with the strange and charm quark masses tuned to approximately their physical values and light quark masses giving pion mass of 260 MeV. We use hierarchical probing to evaluate the disconnected quark loops. We discuss identification of ground state dominance, the Fourier transform procedure and convergence with the momentum boost. We find nonzero results for the disconnected isoscalar and strange quark distributions. The determination of the quark parton distribution and in particular the strange quark contributions that are poorly known provide valuable input to the structure of the nucleon.