The structure of generalized parton distributions is determined from light-front holographic QCD up to a universal reparametrization function $w(x)$ which incorporates Regge behavior at small $x$ and inclusive counting rules at $x\to 1$. A simple ansatz for $w(x)$ that fulfills these physics constraints with a single-parameter results in precise descriptions of both the nucleon and the pion quark distribution functions in comparison with global fits. The analytic structure of the amplitudes leads to a connection with the Veneziano model and hence to a nontrivial connection with Regge theory and the hadron spectrum.

Future experiments at the Jefferson Lab 12 GeV upgrade, in particular, the Solenoidal Large Intensity Device (SoLID), aim at a very precise data set in the region where the partonic structure of the nucleon is dominated by the valence quarks. One of the main goals is to constrain the quark transversity distributions. We apply recent theoretical advances of the global QCD extraction of the transversity distributions to study the impact of future experimental data from the SoLID experiments. Especially, we develop a simple strategy based on the Hessian matrix analysis that allows one to estimate the uncertainties of the transversity quark distributions and their tensor charges extracted from SoLID data simulation. We find that the SoLID measurements with the proton and the effective neutron targets can improve the precision of the u- and d-quark transversity distributions up to one order of magnitude in the range 0.05 < x < 0.6.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, published on Physics Letters

We investigate the quark Wigner distributions in a light-cone spectator model. The Wigner distribution, as a quasidistribution function, provides the most general one-parton information in a hadron. Combining the polarization configurations, unpolarized, longitudinal polarized, or transversal polarized, of the quark and the proton, we can define 16 independent Wigner distributions at leading twist. We calculate all these Wigner distributions for the $u$ quark and the $d$ quark, respectively. In our calculation, both the scalar and the axial-vector spectators are included, and the Melosh–Wigner rotation effects for both the quark and the axial-vector spectator are taken into account. The results provide us a very rich picture of the quark structure in the proton.

We propose a unified new approach to describe polarized and unpolarized quark distributions in the proton based on the gauge-gravity correspondence, light-front holography, and the generalized Veneziano model. We find that the spin-dependent quark distributions are uniquely determined in terms of the unpolarized distributions by chirality separation without the introduction of additional free parameters. The predictions are consistent with existing experimental data and agree with perturbative QCD constraints at large longitudinal momentum $x$. In particular, we predict the sign reversal of the polarized down-quark distribution in the proton at $x=0.8\pm 0.03$, a key property of nucleon substructure which will be tested very soon in upcoming experiments.