Photon and gluon gravitational form factors of proton in QCD

Abstract

The energy-momentum tensor provides a unique insight into the internal gravitational structure of the proton by revealing how energy, momentum, and mechanical properties are distributed among its different QCD components. The gravitational form factors associated with different components of the QCD energy-momentum tensor allow us to investigate the individual contributions of these sectors to the gravitational properties of the proton. In this work, we calculate the photon and gluon gravitational form factors of the proton within the framework of QCD sum rules. Using the photon and gluon components of the QCD energy-momentum tensor, we derive the corresponding sum rules for four independent gravitational form factors. Their momentum transfer dependence is analyzed within the validity region of the method and extrapolated to zero momentum transfer using a multipole parametrization. The resulting parametrizations of the form factors are used to extract the mass and scalar radii associated with the photon and gluon sectors. Our results indicate that the gluon mass radius is smaller than the photon mass radius, suggesting a more localized gluonic energy distribution inside the proton. These findings provide new nonperturbative information on the gravitational structure of the proton and offer complementary theoretical results for future lattice QCD calculations and phenomenological studies.