Lattice QCD Calculations of Parton Physics

Abstract

In this document, we summarize the status and challenges of calculating parton physics in lattice QCD for the US Particle Physics Community Planning Exercise (a.k.a. "Snowmass"). While PDF-moments calculations have been very successful and been continuously improved, new methods have been developed to calculate distributions directly in $x$-space. Many recent lattice studies have been focused on calculating isovector PDFs of the pion and nucleon, learning to control systematics associated with excited-state contamination, renormalization and continuum extrapolations, pion-mass and finite-volume effects, etc. Although in some cases, the lattice results are already competitive with experimental data, to reach the level of precision in a wide range of $x$ for unpolarized nucleon PDFs impactful for future collider physics remains a challenge, and may require exascale supercomputing power. The new theoretical methods open the door for calculating other partonic observables which will be the focus of the experimental program in nuclear physics, including generalized parton distributions and transverse-momentum dependent PDFs. A fruitful interplay between experimental data and lattice-QCD calculations will usher in a new era for parton physics and hadron structure.