The strangeness content of the nucleon

TL;DR

This paper investigates the strange quark content of the nucleon using lattice QCD, revealing significant mixing effects that impact interpretations relevant to dark matter detection.

Contribution

It provides a detailed lattice QCD analysis showing that large disconnected contributions do not necessarily mean high strange quark content in the nucleon.

Findings

Disconnected contributions are large but do not imply high strange quark content.

Mixing effects between connected and disconnected contributions are substantial.

Implications for dark matter detection experiments are discussed.

Abstract

We evaluate the matrix element of $\bar{q} q$ in hadron states on a lattice. We find substantial mixing of the connected and disconnected contributions so that the lattice result that the disconnected contribution to the nucleon is large does not imply that the $\bar{s} s$ content is large. This has implications for dark matter searches.