RT Journal Article T1 Kaon distribution functions from empirical information A1 Xu, Zhen-Ni A1 Binosi, Daniele A1 Chen, Chen A1 Raya, Khépani A1 Roberts, Craig D. A1 Rodríguez Quintero, José AB Using available information from Drell-Yan data on pion and kaon structure functions, an approach is described which enables the development of pointwise profiles for all pion and kaon parton distribution functions (DFs) without reference to theories of hadron structure. The key steps are construction of structure-function-constrained probability-weighted ensembles of valence DF replicas and use of an evolution scheme for parton DFs that is allorders exact. The DFs obtained express qualitatively sound features of light-meson structure, e.g., the effects of Higgs boson couplings into QCD and the size of heavy-quark momentum fractions in light hadrons. In order to improve the results, additional and more precise data on the 𝑢-quark-in-kaon, u𝐾, to 𝑢-quark-in-pion, u𝜋, DF ratio would be necessary. Of greater value would be extraction of u𝐾 alone, thereby avoiding inference from the ratio: currently, the data-based form of u𝐾 is materially influenced by results for u𝜋. PB Elsevier SN 0370-2693 SN 1873-2445 (electrónico) YR 2025 FD 2025 LK https://hdl.handle.net/10272/28005 UL https://hdl.handle.net/10272/28005 LA eng NO Xu, Z.-N., Binosi, D., Chen, C., Raya, K., Roberts, C. D., & Rodríguez-Quintero, J. (2025). Kaon distribution functions from empirical information. Physics Letters B, 865, 139451. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2025.139451 NO Work supported by: National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 12135007, 12247103); Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU grant no. PID2022-140440NB-C22); Program d’Alembert of the Université de Paris-Saclay; Project AST22_00001_X, funded by NextGenerationEU and "Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia y Resiliencia'' (PRTR) from MICIU and Junta de Andalucía; and completed in part at Institut Pascal, Université Paris-Saclay, with the support of the program "Investissements d’avenir'' ANR-11-IDEX-0003-01. DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva RD 30 may 2026