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Higher Mellin moments of the unpolarized PDF of the pion and the kaon from lattice QCD

Constantia Alexandrou1,2,*, Simone Bacchio2, Priyajit Jana1,2, Marcus Petschlies3,4, Luis Alberto Rodriguez Chacon2,5, Gregoris Spanoudes1, Fernanda Steffens3,4, Carsten Urbach3,4, and Urs Wenger6

  • *Contact author: alexand@ucy.ac.cy

Phys. Rev. D 114, 074513 – Published 21 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/fp1g-tvtv

Abstract

We present results on the Mellin moments of the unpolarized parton distribution function (PDF) of the pion and kaon up to the fourth order. The computation is done using one Nf=2+1+1 gauge ensemble of twisted mass fermions with quark masses tuned to approximately their physical values. We reconstruct the valence pion and kaon PDFs using the connected contributions to the three Mellin moments. We compare our results on the Mellin moments and the reconstructed PDFs with other lattice QCD and phenomenological determinations.

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