Mellin Moments of Pion and Kaon Unpolarized PDFs from Nonlocal Operators in Lattice QCD

Abstract

We present a first-principles lattice-QCD determination of Mellin moments of the unpolarized pion and kaon parton distribution functions using matrix elements of boosted mesons coupled to nonlocal operators containing a straight Wilson line. The calculation is performed on an $N_f=2+1+1$ ensemble of maximally twisted-mass fermions with a clover term, with lattice volume $32^3\times64$, lattice spacing $a=0.0934$ fm, and pion mass $m_π=260$ MeV. Matrix elements are computed for hadron momenta $P_3=0$, 0.41, 0.83, 1.25, 1.66, and 2.07 GeV and analyzed within the short-distance factorization framework. We investigate the dependence of the extracted moments on the truncation of the operator-product expansion, the coordinate-space fit window, and the perturbative accuracy of the Wilson coefficients, comparing next-to-leading-order and next-to-next-to-leading-order results. We also perform an RG-improved analysis as a consistency check of the perturbative treatment. Our final results are obtained from combined fits in $(P_3,z)$ space at next-to-next-to-leading-order and are quoted at $μ=2$ GeV. We also study the SU(3) symmetry-breaking effect and reconstruct the valence PDFs from the moments.