Rui Zhang [NT/RBRC]: Kinematically-Enhanced Lattice Interpolating Operators for Simulating Boosted Hadrons

Friday 21 Nov 2025, 14:00 → 15:00 US/Eastern

Abstract: Boosted hadrons play a significant role in experiments, such as the LHC and the forthcoming Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), the pion and kaon measurements at Jefferson Lab, and the decay of heavy mesons and baryons. Therefore, understanding the structure of boosted hadrons is crucial for advancing modern particle and nuclear physics. Lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is essential for providing non-perturbative first-principles predictions for these experiments within the Standard Model. To serve this goal, measurements of boosted hadrons on the lattice are necessary, especially in extracting their spin and three-dimension structures using near-lightcone approximations, and in measuring observables with large Q^2. However, a major computational challenge remains the reliable projection of hadronic states onto large momenta, as the signal-to-noise ratios for hadronic observables decrease rapidly at large boost, limiting the ability of lattice QCD calculations to reliably extract ground state signals.

We propose to use interpolating operators for lattice QCD calculations of highly-boosted pions and nucleons with kinematically-enhanced ground-state overlap factors at large momentum. This enhancement improves the signal-to-noise ratio by amplifying the signal without increasing the variance of the correlation function. We perform proof-of-principle calculations for highly boosted pions and nucleons and demonstrate significant precision improvements—up to a factor of 10 for nucleons and 50 for pions—corresponding to reductions in computational cost by factors of O(100) and O(2000), respectively.