Flavor asymmetry of the polarized sea-quark distributions in the proton

TL;DR

Recent global analyses suggest polarized sea-quark distributions in the proton are flavor asymmetric, aligning with theoretical predictions from the chiral quark soliton model, indicating a significant breakthrough in understanding proton spin structure.

Contribution

This paper confirms the flavor asymmetry of polarized sea-quark distributions and connects experimental findings with theoretical predictions from the chiral quark soliton model.

Findings

Polarized sea-quark distributions are flavor asymmetric.

Experimental data supports theoretical predictions.

Pattern: Δū(x) > 0 and Δd̄(x) < 0 with specific magnitude relations.

Abstract

The recent global analysis of helicity parton distributions, which takes into account available data from inclusive and semi-inclusive polarized deep inelastic scattering, as well as from polarized proton-proton scattering at RHIC, appears to offer the first strong evidence that polarized sea-quark distributions are flavor asymmetric, i.e. $\Delta \bar{u}(x) \ne \Delta \bar{d}(x)$. We point out that the flavor symmetry breaking pattern indicated by their analysis, i.e. $\Delta \bar{u}(x) > 0$ and $\Delta \bar{d}(x) < 0$ with the magnitude correlation $|\Delta \bar{u}(x)| < |\Delta \bar{d}(x)|$, is just consistent with our theoretical predictions given several years ago on the basis of the chiral quark soliton model. We also address ourselves to understanding the physics behind this observation.