Flavor Asymmetry of the Nucleon Sea and the Five-Quark Components of the Nucleons

TL;DR

This paper investigates the flavor asymmetry in the nucleon sea by analyzing experimental data and theoretical models of five-quark Fock states, providing evidence for intrinsic light-quark components in nucleons.

Contribution

It extends previous models to the light-quark sector and compares them with experimental data to support the existence of intrinsic five-quark states in nucleons.

Findings

Qualitative agreement between data and five-quark state calculations.

Evidence supporting intrinsic light-quark sea in nucleons.

Probabilities for specific five-quark configurations are estimated.

Abstract

The existence of the five-quark Fock states for the intrinsic charm quark in the nucleons was suggested some time ago, but conclusive evidence is still lacking. We generalize the previous theoretical approach to the light-quark sector and study possible experimental signatures for such five-quark states. In particular, we compare the $\bar d - \bar u$ and $\bar u + \bar d - s -\bar s$ data with the calculations based on the five-quark Fock states. The qualitative agreement between the data and the calculations is interpreted as evidence for the existence of the intrinsic light-quark sea in the nucleons. The probabilities for the $|uudu\bar{u}>$ and $|uudd\bar{d}>$ Fock states are also extracted.