The flavor structure of the nucleon sea provides unique information to test the statistical parton distributions approach, which imposes strong relations between quark and antiquarks. These properties for unpolarized and helicity distributions have been verified up to now by recent data. We will present here some new results which are a real challenge, also for forthcoming accurate experimental results, mainly in the high Bjorken-$x$ region.
In $\XQM$, a quark can emit Goldstone bosons. The flavor symmetry breaking in the Goldstone boson emission process is used to intepret the nucleon flavor-spin structure. In this paper, we study the inner structure of constituent quarks implied in $\XQM$ caused by the Goldstone boson emission process in nucleon. From a simplified model Hamiltonian derived from $\XQM$, the intrinsic wave functions of constituent quarks are determined. Then the obtained transition probabilities of the emission of Goldstone boson from a quark can give a reasonable interpretation to the flavor symmetry breaking in …
Using the light front wave functions for the nucleons in a quark model in AdS/QCD, we calculate the nucleon electromagnetic form factors. The flavor decompositions of the nucleon form factors are calculated from the GPDs in this model. We show that the nucleon form factors and their flavor decompositions calculated in AdS/QCD are in agreement with experimental data.
A phenomenological ansatz for the flavor-asymmetry of the light sea distributions of the nucleon, based on the Pauli exclusion principle, is proposed. This ansatz is compatible with the measured flavor-asymmetry of the unpolarized sea distributions, $\bar{d}>\bar{u}$, of the nucleon. A prediction for the corresponding polarized flavor-asymmetry is presented and shown to agree with predictions of (chiral quark--soliton) models which successfully reproduced the flavor-asymmetry of the unpolarized sea.
The recent progress on our understanding of the flavor structure of unpolarized and polarized nucleon sea is reviewed. The large flavor asymmetry between the up and down sea quark distributions is now well established. This asymmetry strongly suggests the importance of the mesonic degrees of freedom in the description of the nucleon sea. The strong connection between the flavor structure and the spin structure of the nucleon sea is emphasized. Possible future measurements for testing various theoretical models are also discussed.
Recent deep inelastic scattering and Drell-Yan experiments have revealed a surprisingly large asymmetry between the up and down sea quark distributions in the nucleon. The current status of the flavor asymmetry of the nucleon sea is reviewed. Implications of various theoretical models and possible future measurements are also discussed.
We discuss the flavor asymmetry of polarized light antiquarks in the nucleon, $Δ\bar{u}-Δ\bar{d}$. We present a determination of this quantity based on two global QCD analyses of experimental data, DSSV08 and NNPDFpol1.1, in which sea-quark parton distribution functions are determined respectively either from semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering or W-boson production data. The latter have become available only very recently, and their effect on the polarized flavor asymmetry is presented here for the first time. We find that the flavor asymmetry of polarized antiquarks in the nucleon is de…
The theoretical predictions of the chiral quark soliton model for the unpolarized and longitudinally polarized structure functions of the nucleon are compared with recent high energy data. The theory is shown to explain all the qualitatively noticeable features of the existing experiments, including the light flavor sea-quark asymmetry for the unpolarized distribution functions established by the NMC measurement as well as very small quark spin fraction of the nucleon indicated by the EMC measurement. Another unique feature of the model is that it predicts sizably large isospin asymmetry also …
Several spin and flavor dependent parameters characterizing the strangeness content of the nucleon have been calculated in the chiral constituent quark model with configuration mixing (\chiCQM_{config}) which is known to provide a satisfactory explanation of the ``proton spin crisis'' and related issues. In particular, we have calculated the strange spin polarization Δs, the strangeness contribution to the weak axial vector couplings Δ_8 etc., strangeness contribution to the magnetic moments μ(p)^s etc., the strange quark flavor fraction f_s, the strangeness dependent quark flavor ratios \frac…
We study the relevance of strange degrees of freedom for nucleon structure functions. For this purpose we employ the three flavor generalization of the collective quantization approach to the chiral soliton of the bosonized Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. Contrary to many other soliton models the hadronic tensor is tractable in this model. By applying the Bjorken limit to the hadronic tensor we extract the leading twist contributions to the nucleon structure functions at the low energy scale at which the model is assumed to approximate QCD. After transforming to the infinite momentum frame and perfo…
A simple calculation in the framework of the chiral quark theory of Manohar and Georgi yields results that can account for many of the ''failures'' of the naive quark model: significant strange quark content in the nucleon as indicated by the value of $σ_{πN},$ the $\overline{u}$-$\overline{d} $ asymmetry in the nucleon as measured by the deviation from Gottfried sum rule and by the Drell-Yan process, as well as the various quark contributions to the nucleon spin as measured by the deep inelastic polarized lepton-nucleon scatterings.
The intrinsic quark-antiquark pairs generated by the minimal energy nonperturbative meson-baryon fluctuations in the nucleon sea provide a consistent framework for understanding a number of empirical anomalies observed in the deep inelastic quark-parton structure of nucleons: the flavor asymmetry of the nucleon sea implied by the violation of Gottfried sum rule, the proton spin problem implied by the violation of the Ellis-Jaffe sum rule, and the outstanding conflict between two different determinations of the strange quark sea in the nucleon.
Recent data on the Gottfried sum and less recent ones on the pion-nucleon sigma term seem to disagree with naive parton-based expectations on the light (i.e., up, down and strange) quark content of the nucleon. We show that these discrepancies are resolved if nonperturbative contributions are included in the analysis of the data. These appear both in the computation of matrix elements of operators, and in their QCD scale dependence, and depend strongly on the quantum numbers of the given state.
Recent discovery of neutrino large mixings implies the large mixings in the diagonalizing matrices of $\bf\bar 5$ fields in $SU(5)$ grand unified theory (GUT), while the diagonalizing matrices of $\bf 10$ fields of $SU(5)$ are expected to have small mixings like Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix. We calculate the predictions of flavor changing nucleon decays (FCND) in $SU(5)$, $SO(10)$, and $E_6$ GUT models which have the above features for mixings. We found that FCND can be the main decay mode especially for GUT with higher rank unification group. Recent report for $P\rightarrow π^0μ^+$ proces…
We give a brief summary of the Gottfried sum rule and a flavor asymmetric distribution $\bar u-\bar d$ in the nucleon. First, experimental history of the sum-rule studies is discussed. Second, future prospects for studying the asymmetry at Fermilab and RHIC are discussed. We also comment on possible nuclear modification.
We discuss two topics related to the flavor structure of the nucleon sea. The first is on the identification of light-quark intrinsic sea from the comparison between recent data and the intrinsic sea model by Brodsky et al. Good agreement between the theory and data allows a separation of the intrinsic from the extrinsic sea components. The magnitudes of the up, down, and strange intrinsic seas have been extracted. We then discuss the flavor structure and the Bjorken-x dependence of the connected sea (CS) and disconnected sea (DS). We show that recent data together with input from lattice QCD …
The SU(3) symmetric chiral quark model, which describes interactions between quarks, gluons and the Goldstone bosons, explains reasonably well many aspects of the flavor and spin structure of the proton, except for the values of $f_3/f_8$ and $Δ_3/Δ_8$. Introducing the SU(3)-breaking effect suggested by the mass difference between the strange and nonstrange quarks, we find that this discrepancy can be removed and better overall agreement obtained.
Flavor mixing in the quark-squark-gluino coupling is studied for the minimal SU(5) SUGRA-GUT model and applied to evaluation of the nucleon lifetime. All off-diagonal (generation mixing) elements of Yukawa coupling matrices and of squark/slepton mass matrices are included in solving numerically one-loop renormalization group equations for MSSM parameters, and the parameter region consistent with the radiative electroweak symmetry breaking condition is searched. It is shown that the flavor mixing in the gluino coupling for a large $\tanβ$ is of the same order of magnitude as the corresponding K…
We study charged lepton flavor violation (CLFV) associated with heavy quark pair production in lepton-nucleon deep-inelastic scattering $\ell_i N \to \ell_j q\bar{q} X$. Here $\ell_i$ and $\ell_j$ denote the initial and final leptons; $N$ and $X$ are respectively the initial nucleon and arbitrary final hadronic system. We employ a model Lagrangian in which a scalar and pseudoscalar mediator generates the CLFV. We derive heavy quark structure functions for scalar and pseudoscalar currents and compute momentum distributions of the final lepton for the process. Our focus is on the heavy quark mas…
It is shown that accounting for the relativistic structure of the deuteron allows to explain the ratio of the Drell-Yan pair production cross-section at the low Bjorken $x$ off the deuteron and the proton. Thus, the sea quark distributions in the nucleon should be studied with accounting for the effects of the relativistic structure of the deuteron. The suggested approach reduces theoretical uncertainty in extracting the ratio $\bar u/\bar d$ from the data and it is important for the clarification of the nature of the sea quark asymmetry in the nucleon.
Using the general QCD parametrization (GP) we display the magnetic moments of the octet baryons including all flavor breaking terms to any order. The hierarchy of the GP parameters allows to estimate a parameter $g_{0}$ related to the quark loops contribution of the proton magnetic moment; its order of magnitude is predicted to be inside a comparatively small interval including the value given recently by Leinweber et al. by a lattice QCD calculation
We study off-shell effects of the pion cloud on the sea quark distribution in the nucleon. The structure function of the off-mass-shell pion is obtained within the Nambu and Jona-Lasinio model, where the shape of the distribution function depends on the pion momentum. By using the momentum dependent pion structure function, the SU(2) flavor asymmetry in the nucleon see is reexamined within the pionic model, in which the sea quark distribution of the nucleon is given as a convolution of the off-shell pion structure function. We calculate experimentally observed quantities related to the SU(2) a…
We give an interpretation of the $u$ and $d$ quarks contributions to the nucleon electromagnetic form factors for values of the four-momentum transfer in the multi-GeV region where flavor separated data have been recently made available. The data show, in particular, a suppression of $d$ quarks with respect to $u$ quarks at large momentum transfer. %and constant ratios of the flavor dependent Pauli to Dirac form factors ratios. This trend can be explained using a reggeized diquark model calculation of generalized parton distributions, thus providing a correlation between momentum and coordinat…
The axial vector and tensor charge, defined as the first moments of the forward nucleon matrix elements of corresponding quark currents, are essential for characterizing the spin structure of the nucleon. However, the transversity distribution and thus the tensor charge decouple at leading twist in deep inelastic scattering, making them hard to measure. Additionally, the non-conservation of the tensor charge makes it difficult to predict. There are no definitive theoretical predictions for the tensor charge, aside from several model dependent calculations. We present a new approach that exploi…
Next-to-leading order approximation of the quark helicity distributions are used in the frame work of polarized valon model. The flavor-asymmetry in the light-quark sea of the nucleon can be obtained from the contributions of unbroken sea quark distributions. We employ the polarized valon model and extract the flavor-broken light sea distributions which are modeled with the help of a Pauli-blocking ansatz. Using this ansatz, we can obtain broken polarized valon distributions. From there and by employing convolution integral, broken sea quark distributions are obtainable in this frame work. 0ur…
The theoretical foundations of the quantum statistical approach to parton distributions are reviewed together with the phenomenological motivations from a few specific features of Deep Inelastic Scattering data. The chiral properties of QCD lead to strong relations between quarks and antiquarks distributions and automatically account for the flavor and helicity symmetry breaking of the sea. We are able to describe both unpolarized and polarized structure functions in terms of a small number of parameters. The extension to include their transverse momentum dependence will be also briefly consid…
We evaluate the neutrino nucleon charged current cross section at next-to-leading order in quantum chromodynamic corrections in the variable flavor number scheme and the fixed flavor number scheme, taking into account quark masses. The number scheme dependence is largest at the highest energies considered here, $10^{12}$ GeV, where the cross sections differ by approximately 15 percent. We illustrate the numerical implications of the inconsistent application of the fixed flavor number scheme.
The path integral formulation is given to obtain quark and antiquark distribution functions in the nucleon within the flavor SU(3) version of the chiral quark soliton model. The basic model action is a straightforward generalization of the corresponding SU(2) one, except for one distinguishable feature, i.e. the presence of the SU(3) symmetry breaking term arising from the sizably large mass difference $Δm_s$ between the strange and nonstrange quarks. We treat this SU(3) symmetry breaking effect by relying upon the first order perturbation theory in the mass parameter $Δm_s$. We also address t…
The quark spin and flavor structure of the nucleon is discussed in the SU(4) symmetry breaking chiral quark model. The spin and flavor contents for charm quarks and anti-charm quarks are predicted and compared with the results given by other models. The intrinsic charm quark contribution to the Ellis-Jaffe sum rule is discussed.
The implications of Chiral Quark Model with SU(3) and axial U(1) symmetry breakings as well as configuration mixing generated by one gluon exchange forces ($χ$QM$_{gcm}$) are discussed in context of proton flavor and spin structure as well as hyperon $β$-decay data. Apart from reproducing the success of $χ$QM with symmetry breaking, it is able to improve upon the agreement with data in several cases such as, $G_A/G_V, Δ_8, <A_1^p>$ dependent on spin polarization functions and ($\frac{2 \bar s}{u+d}$), ($\frac{2 \bar s}{\bar u+\bar d}$) and f_s involving the quark distribution functions.
We propose a new model for describing baryon semi-leptonic decays for estimating $F$ and $D$ values with explicit breaking effects of both SU(3) and SU(2) flavor symmetry, where all possible SU(3) and SU(2) breaking effects are induced from an effective interaction. An overall fit including the weak magnetism form factor yields $F=0.477\pm 0.001$ and $D=0.835\pm 0.001$ with $χ^2=4.43/5$ d.o.f. with $V_{ud}=0.975\pm 0.002$ and $V_{us}=0.221\pm 0.002$. The spin content of strange quarks $Δs$ is estimated from the obtained values $F$ and $D$, and the nucleon spin problem is re-examined. Furthermo…
We investigate the role of the flavor asymmetry of the nucleon's polarized antiquark distributions in Drell-Yan lepton pair production in polarized nucleon-nucleon collisions at HERA (fixed-target) and RHIC energies. It is shown that the large polarized antiquark flavor asymmetry predicted by model calculations in the large-N_c limit (chiral quark-soliton model) has a dramatic effect on the double spin asymmetries in high mass lepton pair production, as well as on the single spin asymmetries in lepton pair production through $W^\pm$-bosons at $M^2 = M_W^2$.
The loop level flavor changing neutral currents transitions of the $Σ_{b}\to n l^+l^-$ and $Σ_{c}\to p l^+l^-$ are investigated in full QCD and heavy quark effective theory in the light cone QCD sum rules approach. Using the most general form of the interpolating current for $Σ_{Q}$, $Q=b$ or $c$, as members of the recently discovered sextet heavy baryons with spin 1/2 and containing one heavy quark, the transition form factors are calculated using two sets of input parameters entering the nucleon distribution amplitudes, namely, QCD sum rules and lattice QCD inputs. The obtained results are u…
Polarized deep inelastic scattering (DIS) data are analyzed in leading and next-to-leading order of QCD within the common `standard' scenario of polarized parton distributions with a flavor-symmetric light sea (antiquark) distribution $δ\bar{q}$, and a completely SU(3)$_f$ broken `valence' scenario with totally flavor-asymmetric light sea densities $(δ\bar{u}\neqδ\bar{d}\neqδ\bar{s})$. The latter flavor-broken light sea distributions are modelled with the help of a Pauli-blocking ansatz at the low radiative/dynamical input scales of $μ_{\rm LO(NLO)}^2=0.26$ (0.40) GeV$^2$ which complies with p…
We re-examine the effects of anti-symmetry on the anti-quarks in the nucleon sea arising from gluon exchange and pion exchange between confined quarks. While the effect is primarily to suppress anti-down relative to anti-up quarks, this is numerically insignificant for the pion terms.
Exploiting an approximate phenomenological symmetry of the $J^{PC}=1^{+-}$ light axial vector mesons and using pole dominance, we calculate the flavor contributions to the nucleon tensor charge. The result depends on the decay constants of the axial vector mesons and their couplings to the nucleons.
We study the parity-violating pion-nucleon coupling $G_π$ in the framework of a realistic three flavor Skryme model. We find a sizeable enhancement of $G_π\simeq 0.8 ... 1.3 \cdot 10^{-7}$ compared to previous calculations in two-flavor models with vector mesons. This strangeness enhancement stems from induced kaon fields of the chiral soliton and the non-monotoneous dependence on symmetry breaking of the nucleon matrix element of the flavor singlet piece of the operator associated with these induced fields. Both features are sensitive to four quark operators including an $\bar s s$ pair.
We have performed an evaluation of the individual up- and down-flavor contributions to the nucleon electromagnetic form factors within a relativistic constituent-quark model. It is found that the theoretical parameter-free predictions agree surprisingly well with recent experimental data from a flavor decomposition of the proton and neutron electromagnetic form factors for momentum transfers up to $Q^2\sim\;$3.5 GeV$^2$. It means that in this regime three-quark valence degrees of freedom dominate and other contributions, such as explicit mesonic effects, can at most play a minor role.
By using the soft pion theorem in the inclusive reactions, soft pions' contribution to the structure function $F_2$ in the nucleon is estimated. It is shown that this contribution produces such a large flavor asymmetry in the light sea quark distributions that it gives about $30\sim 50 %$ of the NMC deficit in the Gottfried sum.
Recent deep inelastic scattering and Drell-Yan experiments have revealed a surprisingly large asymmetry between the up and down sea quark distributions in the nucleon. In this article, we review the status of the flavor asymmetry of the nucleon sea. The implications of the recent results on various theoretical models as well as possible future measurements are also discussed.
The chiral quark model with a nonet of Goldstone bosons can yield an adequate description of the observed proton flavor and spin structure. In a previous publication we have compared the results of a SU(3) symmetric calculation with the phenomenological findings based on experimental measurements and SU(3) symmetry relations. In this paper we discuss their SU(3) and axial-U(1) breaking corrections. With two parameters, we obtain a very satisfactory fit to the F/D ratios for the octet baryon masses and for their axial vector couplings, as well as the different quark flavor contributions to the …
Sea quark contents of the octet baryons are investigated by employing an extended chiral constituent quark approach, which embodies higher Fock five-quark components in the baryons wave-functions. The well-known flavor asymmetry of the nucleon sea $\bar{d}-\bar{u}$, is used as input to predict the probabilities of $\bar{u}$, $\bar{d}$ and $\bar{s}$ in the nucleon, $Λ$, $Σ$ and $Ξ$ baryons, due to the intrinsic five-quark components in the baryons wave functions.
We suggest that breaking of SU(3) flavor symmetry mainly resides in the baryon wave--functions while the charge operators have no (or only small) explicit symmetry breaking components. We utilize the collective coordinate approach to chiral soliton models to support this picture. In particular we compute the $g_A/g_V$ ratios for hyperon beta--decay and the strangeness contribution to the nucleon axial current matrix elements and analyze their variation with increasing flavor symmetry breaking.
After taking account of the scale dependence by means of the standard DGLAP evolution equation, the theoretical predictions of the chiral quark soliton model for the unpolarized and longitudinally polarized structure functions of the nucleon are compared with the recent high energy data. The theory is shown to explain all the qualitative features of the experiments, including the NMC data for $F_2^p (x) - F_2^n (x)$, $F_2^n (x) / F_2^p (x)$, the Hermes and NuSea data for $\bar{d}(x) - \bar{u}(x)$, the EMC and SMC data for $g_1^p(x)$, $g_1^n(x)$ and $g_1^d(x)$. Among others, flavor asymmetry of…
We review the current status and future prospects on the subject of flavor structure of the nucleon sea. The flavor structure of the nucleon sea provides unique information on the non-perturbative aspects of strong interactions allowing stringent tests of various models on the partonic structures of the nucleons as well as lattice QCD calculations. The scope of this review covers the unpolarized, polarized, and the transverse-momentum dependent sea-quark distributions of the nucleons. While the main focus of this review is on the physics motivation and recent progress on the subject of the nuc…
We present our results for a flavor-dependent EMC effect based on the nIMParton nuclear PDFs, in which the $x$-dependence is described with a nucleon swelling model. The nuclear correction from nucleon swelling is considered through a modification of the initial valence quark distributions instead of a dynamical rescaling. To probe the flavor-dependence of the model, the experimental observables are calculated applying nIMParton nuclear modifications for various experiments: parity-violating deep inelastic scattering on nuclear target, pion-induced Drell-Yan, and W-boson production in proton-n…
By the analysis of the world data base of elastic electron scattering on the proton and the neutron (for the latter, in fact, on $^2H$ and $^3He$) important experimental insights have recently been gained into the flavor compositions of nucleon electromagnetic form factors. We report on testing the Graz Goldstone-boson-exchange relativistic constituent-quark model in comparison to the flavor contents in low-energy nucleons, as revealed from electron-scattering phenomenology. It is found that a satisfactory agreement is achieved between theory and experiment for momentum transfers up to $Q^2\si…
The use of weak decays to determine proton spin structure is examined in view of possible violations of the Bjorken and Gottfried Sum rules, flavor symmetry breaking and flavor asymmetry in the sea. The use of the neutron decay is found to be unaffected by all these. A method for including these effects in analyses of hyperon decays shows that a flavor-asymmetric sea produced by SU(3) symmetry breaking has only a small effect on results for the total spin carried by quarks. However the strange quark contribution cannot be reliably obtained from charged lepton scattering and weak decay data alo…
Domain-wall fermions (DWF) is a lattice discretization for Dirac fields that preserves continuum-like chiral and flavor symmetries that are essential in hadron physics. RIKEN-BNL-Columbia (RBC) and UKQCD Collaborations have been generating sets of realistic 2+1-flavor dynamical lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) numerical ensembles with DWF quarks with strange mass set almost exactly at its physical value via reweighing and degenerate up and down mass set as light as practical. In this report the current status of the nucleon-structure calculations using these ensembles are summarized.
I review some recent developments in the study of quark flavor distributions in the nucleon, including (i) valence quark distributions and the quark-hadron duality prediction for the x -> 1 d/u ratio (ii) sea quark asymmetries and electromagnetic form factors (iii) strange quarks in the nucleon.
The spin and orbital angular momentum carried by different quark flavors in the nucleon are calculated in the SU(3) chiral quark model with symmetry-breaking. The similar calculation is also performed for other octet and decuplet baryons. Furthermore, the flavor and spin contents for charm and anti-charm quarks are predicted in the SU(4) symmetry breaking chiral quark model.
The possibilities to determine the flavor structure of the polarized sea (antiquark) distributions of the nucleon via vector boson $(γ^*, W^{\pm}, Z^0)$ production at high energy polarized hadron--hadron colliders, such as the Relativistic Heavy--Ion Collider (RHIC), are studied in detail. In particular the perturbative stability of the expected asymmetries in two representative models for the (un)broken flavor structure are investigated by confronting perturbative QCD leading order predictions of the expected asymmetries with their next--to--leading order counterparts.
Within the collective coordinate approach to chiral soliton models we suggest that breaking of SU(3) flavor symmetry mainly resides in the baryon wave-functions while the charge operators have no (or only small) symmetry breaking components. In this framework we study the $g_A/g_V$ ratios for hyperon beta-decay as well as the various quark flavor components of the axial charge of the nucleon and the $Λ$-hyperon.
Properties of the proton and the neutron are explored in partially-quenched chiral perturbation theory with two non-degenerate light flavors. Masses, magnetic moments, matrix elements of isovector twist-2 operators and axial-vector currents are computed at the one-loop level in the chiral expansion.
With twisted boundary conditions on the quark fields, we study nucleon matrix elements of the axial current utilizing twisted heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory. One can explore the momentum transfer dependence of the axial form factors more easily than by using ordinary lattice quantized momenta alone. As examples, we derive expressions for the nucleon axial radius and pseudoscalar form factor.
Parton distributions derived from a chiral quark model that generates an excess of down quarks and antiquarks in the proton's sea satisfactorily describe the measured yields of muon pairs produced in proton-nucleus collisions. Comparison of dilepton yields from hydrogen and deuterium targets promises greater sensitivity to the predicted flavor asymmetry.
We re-analyze the flavor decomposition of the pion-nucleon $σ$-term in the framework of baryon chiral perturbation to fourth order. We employ a covariant and the heavy baryon framework including also the low-lying decuplet. Using only continuum data, we find a small strangeness content of the proton. The uncertainties are, however, large and might be overcome by dedicated lattice QCD calculations.
