Sea quark contents of octet baryons

TL;DR

This paper compares three theoretical models explaining the flavor asymmetry of sea quarks in octet baryons, highlighting differences in predictions and emphasizing the need for experimental data to better understand non-perturbative QCD effects.

Contribution

It evaluates and contrasts three models of sea quark content in octet baryons, proposing new experiments to discriminate among them.

Findings

Models predict different sea quark contents for octet baryons.

Current data insufficient to distinguish models.

Further experiments needed for non-perturbative QCD insights.

Abstract

The flavor asymmetry of the nucleon sea, i.e., the excess of $d\bar{d}$ quark-antiquark pairs over $u\bar{u}$ ones in the proton can be explained by several different models; therefore, it is a challenge to discriminate these models from each other. We examine in this Letter three models: the balance model, the meson cloud model, and the chiral quark model, and we show that these models give quite different predictions on the sea quark contents of other octet baryons. New experiments aimed at measuring the flavor contents of other octet baryons are needed for a more profound understanding of the non-perturbative properties of quantum chromodynamics (QCD).