Measurement of the light quark flavor asymmetry in the nucleon sea.
Fermilab experiment E866 has performed a precision measurement of the ratio of Drell-Yan yields from 800 GeV/c protons incident on deuterium and hydrogen targets. The measurement is used to determine the ratio of down antiquarks({bar d}) to up antiquarks({bar u}) in the proton over a broad range in the fraction of the proton momentum carried by the antiquark, 0.02 < x < 0.345. For x < 0.15, the data is in reasonable agreement with pre-existing parton distributions while for x > 0.20 the data is much closer to unity than these parton functions had indicated. The light quark asymmetry provides valuable information on the relative role perturbative and non-perturbative mechanisms play in generating the nucleon sea. A proposal to extend the Drell-Yan measurement to higher values of x using 120 GeV protons from the Fermilab main injector will be discussed.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Lab., IL (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of Energy (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-31109-ENG-38
- OSTI ID:
- 11867
- Report Number(s):
- ANL/PHY/CP-99361; TRN: AH200118%%304
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: EPIC '99 Workshop, Bloomington, IN (US), 04/08/1999--04/11/1999; Other Information: PBD: 25 Jun 1999
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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