Parton physics of the large-$N_c$ mesons

Abstract

We initiate the studies on the structural physics of the tower of stable large-$N_c$ mesons through a first computation of the collinear quark-structure of a large-$N_c$ pion using lattice Monte-Carlo methods. We adapt the large-$N_c$ continuum reduction for the determination of meson correlation functions involving the spatially-extended quasi-PDF operators as a perfect strategy to concentrate only on the short perturbative length scales. We find the internal structures of pion in the large-$N_c$ and $N_c=3$ theories to be quite similar. Interestingly, we find hints that even the observed differences could arise to a large extent via the different perturbative QCD evolution in the two theories from similar initial conditions at low factorization scales.

Comments: version accepted in PRD