Heavy flavor-asymmetric pseudoscalar mesons on the light front

Abstract

We extract the leading Fock-state light front wave functions of heavy flavor-asymmetric pseudoscalar mesons D, B, and Bc from their Bethe-Salpeter wave functions, based on the Dyson-Schwinger equations approach. We then study their leading-twist parton distribution amplitudes, generalized parton distribution functions, and transverse momentum-dependent parton distributions. The spatial distributions of the quark and antiquark on the transverse plane are presented, along with their charge and energy distributions on the light front. We find that in the considered mesons, the heavier quarks carry most of the longitudinal momentum fraction, resulting in narrow x distributions, while the lighter quarks play an active role in shaping the transverse distributions in both spatial and momentum space, exhibiting a duality that embodies characteristics of both light mesons and heavy quarkonium. Published by the American Physical Society 2024