Proton Structure Functions from Holographic Einstein-Dilaton Models

Abstract

We study the proton structure functions $F_1$ and $F_2$ in the context of holography. We develop a general framework that extends previous holographic calculations of $F_1$ and $F_2$ to the case where the bulk geometry stems from bottom-up Einstein-Dilaton models, which are commonly used in the literature to describe some properties of QCD in the strong coupling regime. We focus on a choice of the dilaton potential that leads to a holographic model able to reproduce known lattice QCD results for the glueball masses at zero temperature and pure Yang-Mills thermodynamics above deconfinement. Once the parameters of the background holographic model are fixed, we introduce probe fermionic and gauge fields in the bulk {\it a la} Polchinski and Strassler to determine the corresponding structure functions. This particular realization of the model can successfully describe the proton mass and provide results for $F_2$ at large $x$ in very good agreement with experimental data.