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Title Positivity and renormalization of parton densities
Authors Ted Rogers, Nobuo Sato, John Collins, Adair Collins
JLAB number JLAB-THY-21-3507
LANL number arXiv:2111.01170
Other number DOE/OR/23177-5324
Document Type(s) (Journal Article) 
Associated with EIC: No
Supported by Jefferson Lab LDRD Funding: No
Funding Source: Nuclear Physics (NP)
 

Journal
Compiled for Physical Review D
Volume 105
Page(s) 076010
Refereed
Publication Abstract: There have been recent debates about whether MS parton densities exactly obey positivity bounds (including the Soffer bound), and whether the bounds should be applied as a constraint on global fits to parton densities and on nonperturbative calculations. A recent paper (JHEP 11 (2020) 129) appears to provide a proof of positivity in contradiction with earlier work by other authors. We examine their derivation and find that its primary failure is in the apparently uncontroversial statement that bare pdfs are always positive. We show that under the conditions used in the derivation, that statement fails. We provide some elementary calculations in a model QFT that show how this situation can generically arise in reality. In addition, we observe that the methods used in the derivation are in common with much, but not all, other work where factorization is derived. Our examination pinpoints considerable difficulties with these methods that render them either wrong or highly problematic. The issue of positivity highlights that these methods can lead to wrong results of phenomenological importance. From our analysis we identify the restricted situations in which positivity can be violated.
Experiment Numbers:
Group: THEORY CENTER
Document: pdf
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.105.076010
Accepted Manuscript: PhysRevD.105.076010.pdf
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