Recent results on angular momentum and strangeness in the nucleon

Abstract

HERMES has measured azimuthal single-spin asymmetries of pions and charged kaons produced in deep-inelastic scattering of electrons and positrons off a transversely polarized hydrogen target. These asymmetries provide information about the Collins and Sivers mechanisms, which are signals for the transverse parton distribution function h_1^q in convolution with the Collins fragmentation function H_1^{\perp,q}, and of the Sivers distribution function f_{1T}^{\perp,q} with the spin-averaged fragmentation function D_q^h, respectively. Furthermore, both the momentum and helicity distributions of the strange quark sea have been extracted in leading order from the multiplicity and the inclusive double spin asymmetry, respectively, in the production of charged kaons when scattering polarized positrons off a longitudinally polarized deuterium target. The shape of the momentum distribution is softer than that of the average of the \bar{u} and \bar{d} quarks. The helicity distribution is found to be consistent with zero.