The pion and kaon $\langle x^3 \rangle$ from lattice QCD and PDF reconstruction from Mellin moments.

We present a calculation of the pion and kaon Mellin moment $\langle x^3 \rangle$ extracted directly in lattice QCD using a three-derivative local operator. We use one ensemble of gauge configurations with two degenerate light, a strange and a charm quark ($N_f=2+1+1$) of maximally twisted mass fermions with clover improvement. The ensemble reproduces a pion mass $\sim260$ MeV, and a kaon mass $\sim530$ MeV. Excited-states contamination is evaluated using four values of the source-sink time separation within the range of $1.12-1.67$ fm. We use an operator that is free of mixing, and apply a multiplicative renormalization function calculated non-perturbatively. Our results are converted to the $\overline{\rm MS}$ scheme and evolved at a scale of 2 GeV, using three-loop expressions in perturbation theory. The final values are $\langle x^3 \rangle_\pi^{u^+}=0.024(18)_{\rm stat}(2)_{\rm syst}$, $\langle x^3 \rangle_K^{u^+}=0.035(6)_{\rm stat}(3)_{\rm syst}$, and $\langle x^3 \rangle_K^{s^+}=0.075(5)_{\rm stat}(1)_{\rm syst}$, where the systematic error is the uncertainty due to excited state contamination. We combine $\langle x^3 \rangle$ with the two lower moments to obtain the ratios $\langle x^3 \rangle/\langle x \rangle$ and $\langle x^3 \rangle/\langle x^2 \rangle$, as well as ratios between the pion and kaon moments. In addition, we reconstruct the $x$-dependence of the pion and kaon PDFs via 2- and 3-parameter fits to our results. We find that the reconstruction is feasible and that our lattice data favor a large $x$-dependence that falls as $(1-x)^2$ for both the pion and kaon PDFs. We integrate the reconstructed PDFs to extract the higher moments with $4\leq n\leq 6$. Finally, we compare the pion and kaon PDFs, as well as the ratios of their moments, to address the effect of SU(3) flavor symmetry breaking.