Target Mass Effects in Parton Quasi-Distributions

Abstract

We study the impact of non-zero (and apparently large) value of the nucleon mass $M$ on the shape of parton quasi-distributions $Q(y,p_3)$, in particular on its change with the change of the nucleon momentum $p_3$. We observe that the usual target-mass corrections induced by the $M$-dependence of the twist-2 operators are rather small. Moreover, we show that within the framework based on parametrizations by transverse momentum dependent distribution functions (TMDs) these corrections are canceled by higher-twist contributions. We identify a novel source of kinematic target-mass dependence of TMDs and build models corrected for such dependence. We find that resulting changes may be safely neglected for $p_3\gtrsim 2M$.

Comments: 9 pages, 5 figures, to appear in Physics Letters B