On the renormalization of quasi parton distribution

Abstract

Recent developments showed that light-cone parton distributions can be studied by investigating the large momentum limit of the hadronic matrix elements of spacelike correlators, which are known as quasi parton distributions. Like a light-cone parton distribution, a quasi parton distribution also contains ultraviolet divergences and therefore needs renormalization. The renormalization of non-local operators in general is not well understood. However, in the case of quasi quark distribution, the bilinear quark operator with a straight-line gauge link appears to be multiplicatively renormalizable by the quark wave function renormalization in the axial gauge. We first show that the renormalization of the self energy correction to the quasi quark distribution is equivalent to that of the heavy-light quark vector current in heavy quark effective theory at one-loop order. Assuming this equivalence at two-loop order, we then show that the multiplicative renormalizability of the quasi quark distribution is true at two-loop order.