Abstract
In this project, I want to address a crucial problem in modern particle physics, namely the quest for the proton's 3D structure. According to the well-established theory of Quantum Chromodynamics, this building block of all visible matter is a composite particle built from elementary partons: quarks and gluons. Many collider experiments can be successfully described in a simple one-dimensional picture where these partons move in the same direction as their parent proton. This picture fails, however, when experiments are sensitive to the internal motion or spin correlations of the partons, nor can it account for most of the proton's main properties such as its radius, mass, and spin. To answer such fundamental questions, the full 3D structure of the proton needs to be explored. This structure can be extracted from experiments and encoded into 'transverse momentum dependent parton distribution functions' (TMDs). In this project, I will apply the promising new 'Parton Branching' (PB) method to the study of spin polarized TMDs, which are still poorly known but are essential to solving the puzzles mentioned above. The PB approach was recently developed at the UAntwerp and in DESY, and proved already very successful in the description of unpolarized TMDs. This project is extremely timely since the study of TMDs is a driving force behind several proposed new experiments worldwide (in CERN, BNL, JLab,...), among which the recently approved Electron-Ion Collider (EIC).
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