Virtual meson cloud of the nucleon and deep inelastic lepton scattering

Journal Article · Fri Mar 01 04:00:00 EST 1996 · Physical Review, D

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.53.2586· OSTI ID:279177

Koepf, W; Frankfurt, L L ^[1]; Strikman, M ^[2]

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1. School of Physics and Astronomy, Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, Tel Aviv University, 69978 Ramat Aviv (Israel)
2. Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802 (United States)

We address the question of whether the nucleon{close_quote}s nonperturbative antiquark sea can be attributed entirely to its virtual meson cloud and, in essence, whether there exists a smooth transition between hadronic and quark-gluon degrees of freedom. We take into account contributions from {pi} and {ital K} mesons and compare them with the nucleon{close_quote}s antiquark distributions which serve as nonperturbative inputs to the QCD evolution equations. While the agreement of our calculations with data-based parametrizations is satisfactory and scale independent for the flavor-breaking share of the nucleon{close_quote}s antiquark sea, the flavor singlet component is quite poorly described. We find that large meson loop momenta, {parallel}{ital k}{parallel}{approx_equal}0.8 GeV, dominate in the calculation of the nucleon{close_quote}s sea quark distributions in the meson cloud model. This value is close to the scale where perturbative QCD evolution starts, which further indicates the limitations of the applicability of the physical picture of a meson cloud around the nucleon in high-energy processes. {copyright} {ital 1996 The American Physical Society.}

• DOE Contract Number: FG02-93ER40771
• OSTI ID: 279177
• Journal Information: Physical Review, D, Journal Name: Physical Review, D Journal Issue: 5 Vol. 53; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

66 PHYSICS
CLOUDS
DEEP INELASTIC SCATTERING
DEGREES OF FREEDOM
GLUONS
LEPTON REACTIONS
MESONS
NUCLEONS
PERTURBATION THEORY
QUANTUM CHROMODYNAMICS
QUARKS