Back-to-back dijet production in DIS at arbitrary Bjorken-x: TMD quark distributions to twist-3 accuracy

Abstract

We study the contributions of target quark background to quark-gluon and quark-antiquark dijet productions cross sections in deep inelastic scattering (DIS) at arbitrary Bjorken-$x$. Using the background-field method, we organize the leading-order dijet production cross section in terms of bilocal quark and trilocal quark--gluon--quark correlators. The former provides the contributions of the leading-twist as well as the kinematical and dynamical twist-three quark transverse-momentum-dependent (TMD) distributions, while the latter encode contributions of the dynamical twist-three TMD distributions. {Together with the gluon distributions derived in Ref.~\cite{Mukherjee:2026cte}}, these results provide the complete leading-order cross section for back-to-back dijet production in DIS at arbitrary Bjorken-$x$ to twist-three accuracy. This theoretical framework extends the TMD description of the process beyond the small-$x$ eikonal regime and provides the necessary tools for analyzing data from the future Electron--Ion Collider.

Comments: 31 pages, 4 figures