Constraining Proton Spin at Small Bjorken $x$ with Valence Quark Model

7 May 2026, 09:40
20m
Sala SATURNO A, First Floor (Hotel Carlton)

Sala SATURNO A, First Floor

Hotel Carlton

Talk WG2 Small-x, Diffraction and Vector Mesons WG2 Small-x, diffraction and vector mesons

Speaker

Yossathorn Tawabutr (Chulalongkorn University)

Description

We apply the valence quark model with corrections coming from gluon emissions to constrain the moderate-energy behavior of the polarized dipole amplitudes responsible for the quark and gluon helicity inside the proton at small Bjorken $x$. Our model radically reduces the number of free parameters associated with the moderate-energy initial conditions to the small-$x$ helicity evolution, ultimately allowing us to determine the quark and gluon helicity inside the proton with much smaller uncertainties, compared to similar analyses employing the conventional Born-inspired initial condition. The remaining free parameters from the valence quark model are constrained via a global analysis to the available polarized small-$x$ deep inelastic scattering data, akin to contemporary works within the Jefferson Lab Angular Momentum (JAM) framework. A good description of the world data is obtained with only 8 free parameters, which are are tightly constrained by the data, allowing us to predict the proton polarized structure function, $g_1^p$, to be negative at small $x$. Furthermore, we obtain the small-$x$ quark and gluon spins to give a contribution,
$$\int_{10^{-5}}^{0.1} dx \left(\frac{1}{2}\Delta\Sigma + \Delta G\right) = 0.63 \pm 0.10\;\;\text{or}\;\;1.35\pm 0.16$$
to the proton spin, depending on the specific running coupling prescription employed.

Speaker confirmation Yes

Authors

Daniel Adamiak (Michigan State University) Heikki Mäntysaari (University of Jyväskylä) Yossathorn Tawabutr (Chulalongkorn University)

Presentation materials