Speaker
Description
We report recent advancements in understanding nucleon structure within the Basis Light-Front Quantization (BLFQ) framework—a fully relativistic, nonperturbative approach to solving quantum field theories. Starting with the leading Fock sector $|qqq\rangle$ and an effective light-front Hamiltonian incorporating confinement and one-gluon exchange, BLFQ has successfully described key nucleon observables. The framework has since been extended to include the next-to-leading Fock sector $|qqqg\rangle$, enabling studies of gluonic contributions to the nucleon's internal structure, including gluon helicity, orbital angular momentum, and three-dimensional imaging through GPDs and TMDs. Most recently, BLFQ has achieved a significant milestone by computing nucleon light-front wavefunctions as eigenstates of the QCD Hamiltonian without an explicit confining potential. These calculations, including Fock sectors up to $|qqqq\bar{q}\rangle$, allow towards first-principles predictions of quark and gluon matter densities, helicity and transversity distributions, and spin observables, showing qualitative agreement with experimental and phenomenological results. Together, these developments highlight BLFQ’s growing capacity to provide an increasingly complete and realistic picture of nucleon structure grounded in QCD.
