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Light-front mass operator with dressed quarks

J. A. O. Marinho1,2,*, J. P. B. C. de Melo3,†, T. Frederico4,‡, and W. de Paula4,§

  • *Contact author: adnei@ufra.edu.br
  • †Contact author: joao.mello@cruzeirodosul.edu.br
  • ‡Contact author: tobias@ita.br
  • §Contact author: wayne@ita.br
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Phys. Rev. D 113, 096014 – Published 18 May, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/vv85-p6kd

Abstract

We construct an effective light-front mass-squared operator for quark-antiquark systems that incorporates quark dressing effects through a running quark mass. Starting from a Minkowski-space quark propagator constrained by lattice-QCD–inspired parametrization, we derive the disconnected light-front resolvent for a light quark-antiquark system using a generalized spectral representation of an individual quark propagator separating out the instantaneous contributions. By projecting the resolvent onto a constituent-quark helicity basis, we obtain an effective dressed mass-squared operator suitable for light-front Hamiltonian approaches. We introduce an effective light-front quark self-energy and analyze its momentum dependence. As an application, we study pion structure using representative light-front wave-function models and compute unpolarized transverse-momentum–dependent distributions, unpolarized parton distribution functions, and distribution amplitudes. Our results show that quark dressing induces sizable infrared modifications while preserving controlled ultraviolet behavior, providing a framework to incorporate nonperturbative QCD dynamics into light-front descriptions of hadrons.

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Phys. Rev. D 113, 096014– Published 18 May, 2026
  • Received 16 February 2026
  • Accepted 21 April 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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