Flavor decomposition for the proton helicity parton distribution functions

Physical review letters 126(10), 102003 (2021). doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.102003
We present, for the first time, an ab initio calculation of the individual up, down, and strange quark helicity parton distribution functions for the proton. The calculation is performed within the twisted mass clover-improved fermion formulation of lattice QCD. The analysis is performed using one ensemble of dynamical up, down, strange, and charm quarks with a pion mass of 260 MeV. The lattice matrix elements are nonperturbatively renormalized and the final results are presented in the $\overline{MS}$ scheme at a scale of 2 GeV. We give results for $��u^+(x), ��d^+(x) ��u^-(x), ��d^-(x)$, including disconnected quark loop contributions, as well as for $��s^+(x)$ and $��s^-(x)$. For the latter we achieve unprecedented precision compared to the phenomenological estimates.
Published by APS, College Park, Md.