QCD Running Coupling in the Nonperturbative and Near-Perturbative Regimes.

We use analytic continuation to extend the gauge-gravity duality nonperturbative description of the strong force coupling into the transition, near-perturbative, regime where perturbative effects become important. By excluding the unphysical region in coupling space from the flow of singularities in the complex plane, we derive a specific relation between the scales relevant at large and short distances; this relation is uniquely fixed by requiring maximal analyticity. The unified effective coupling model gives an accurate description of the data in the nonperturbative and the near-perturbative regions.

Unified Description of Polarized and Unpolarized Quark Distributions in the Proton.

We propose a unified new approach to describe polarized and unpolarized quark distributions in the proton based on the gauge-gravity correspondence, light-front holography, and the generalized Veneziano model. We find that the spin-dependent quark distributions are uniquely determined in terms of the unpolarized distributions by chirality separation without the introduction of additional free parameters. The predictions are consistent with existing experimental data and agree with perturbative QCD constraints at large longitudinal momentum x.

The spin structure of the nucleon.

We review the present understanding of the spin structure of protons and neutrons, the fundamental building blocks of nuclei collectively known as nucleons. The field of nucleon spin provides a critical window for testing Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the gauge theory of the strong interactions, since it involves fundamental aspects of hadron structure which can be probed in detail in experiments, particularly deep inelastic lepton scattering on polarized targets. QCD was initially probed in high energy deep inelastic lepton scattering with unpolarized beams and targets.

Universality of Generalized Parton Distributions in Light-Front Holographic QCD.

The structure of generalized parton distributions is determined from light-front holographic QCD up to a universal reparametrization function w(x) which incorporates Regge behavior at small x and inclusive counting rules at x→1. A simple ansatz for w(x) that fulfills these physics constraints with a single-parameter results in precise descriptions of both the nucleon and the pion quark distribution functions in comparison with global fits. The analytic structure of the amplitudes leads to a connection with the Veneziano model and hence to a nontrivial connection with Regge theory and the hadron spectrum.

Light-front holography: a first approximation to QCD.

Starting from the Hamiltonian equation of motion in QCD, we identify an invariant light-front coordinate zeta which allows the separation of the dynamics of quark and gluon binding from the kinematics of constituent spin and internal orbital angular momentum. The result is a single-variable light-front Schrödinger equation for QCD which determines the eigenspectrum and the light-front wave functions of hadrons for general spin and orbital angular momentum. This light-front wave equation is equivalent to the equations of motion which describe the propagation of spin-J modes on anti-de Sitter (AdS) space.

Hadronic spectra and light-front wave functions in holographic QCD.

We show how the string amplitude phi(z) defined on the fifth dimension in AdS5 space can be precisely mapped to the light-front wave functions of hadrons in physical space-time. We find an exact correspondence between the holographic variable z and an impact variable zeta, which represents the measure of transverse separation of the constituents within the hadrons. In addition, we derive effective four dimensional Schrödinger equations for the bound states of massless quarks and gluons which exactly reproduce the anti-de Sitter conformal field theory results and give a realistic description of the light-quark meson and baryon spectrum as well as the form factors for space-like Q2.

Hadronic spectrum of a holographic dual of QCD.

We compute the spectrum of light hadrons in a holographic dual of QCD defined on AdS5 x S5 which has conformal behavior at short distances and confinement at large interquark separation. Specific hadrons are identified by the correspondence of string modes with the dimension of the interpolating operator of the hadron's valence Fock state. Higher orbital excitations are matched quanta to quanta with fluctuations about the AdS background.