Understanding gravitational form factors with the Weizsäcker-Williams method

Understanding the internal structure of nucleons and nuclei has been a topic of enduring interest in high-energy physics. Gravitational form factors (GFFs) provide an important portal for us to probe the energy-momentum/mass distribution of nucleons and nuclei. This paper presents the study of the photon and gluon momentum GFFs, also known as the A-GFFs, of relativistic hadrons using the Weizsäcker-Williams method. To begin, we express the photon A-GFFs in terms of charge form factors and discuss the corresponding photon radius. Furthermore, an integral relation between the gluon A-GFF and the Laplacian of dipole scattering amplitude is derived in the small-x framework, and it allows us to unravel the gluon energy momentum distribution inside hadrons through measurements at the upcoming Electron-Ion Collider. In addition, we generalize the analysis to study the A-GFF of nuclei and propose employing the nuclear gluon mean square radius, together with the charge distribution, to constrain the neutron distribution for large nuclei. This work provides an interesting perspective into the fundamental structure of high-energy hadrons. Published by the American Physical Society 2025