Comments on Phys. Rev. D89 (2014) 097101 "Reevaluation of the parton distribution of strange quarks in the nucleon"

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the HERMES collaboration's 2014 analysis of strange quark distribution in the nucleon, revealing that their conclusions are premature due to systematic uncertainties in the data.

Contribution

It provides a systematic study of the HERMES multiplicity data, challenging previous claims about the shape of the strange quark density in the nucleon.

Findings

HERMES data conclusions are premature

Systematic uncertainties affect strange quark density extraction

Reevaluation suggests different strange quark distribution shape

Abstract

The HERMES collaboration in Phys. Rev. D89 (2014) 097101 extracted information about the strange quark density in the nucleon. One of the main results is an observation that the shape of the extracted density is very different from the shapes of the strange quark density from global QCD fits and also from that of the light antiquarks. In this paper systematic studies on the HERMES published multiplicity of pion and kaon data are presented. It is shown that the conclusions concerning the strange quark distribution in the nucleon reached in Phys. Rev. D89 (2014) 097101 are at the moment premature.