The flavor asymmetry of the light quark sea from semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering.

The HERMES collaboration Ackerstaff, K. ; Airapetian, A. ; Akopov, N. ; et al.
Phys.Rev.Lett. 81 (1998) 5519-5523, 1998.
Inspire Record 473345 DOI 10.17182/hepdata.44248

The flavor asymmetry of the light quark sea of the nucleon is determined in the kinematic range 0.02<x<0.3 and 1 GeV^2<Q^2<10 GeV^2, for the first time from semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering. The quantity (dbar(x)-ubar(x))/(u(x)-d(x)) is derived from a relationship between the yields of positive and negative pions from unpolarized hydrogen and deuterium targets. The flavor asymmetry dbar-ubar is found to be non-zero and x dependent, showing an excess of dbar over ubar quarks in the proton.

1 data table

The ratio of parton distribution functions (PDF) is determined from the ratio of the differencies between charged pion yields for proton and neutron targets: (N_p(pi-)-N_n(pi-))/(N_p(pi+)-N_n(pi+)).