Counting Rule for Hadronic Light-Cone Wave Functions

Abstract

We introduce a systematic way to write down the Fock components of a hadronic light-cone wave function with $n$ partons and orbital angular momentum projection $l_z$. We show that the wave function amplitude $\psi_n(x_i,k_{i\perp},l_{zi})$ has a leading behavior $1/(k^2_\perp)^{[n+|l_z|+{\rm min}(n'+|l_z'|)]/2-1}$ when all parton transverse momenta are uniformly large, where $n'$ and $l_z'$ are the number of partons and orbital angular momentum projection, respectively, of an amplitude that mixes under renormalization. The result can be used as a constraint in modeling the hadronic light-cone wave functions. We also derive a generalized counting rule for hard exclusive processes involving parton orbital angular momentum and hadron helicity flip.