Perturbative and Non-Perturbative Origins of the Proton Sea

Abstract

Deep Inelastic Scattering and Drell-Yan experiments have measured a light flavor asymmetry in the proton sea. The excess of dbar over ubar quarks can be understood in many models, but the ratio dbar(x)/ubar(x) measured by Fermilab E866 has not been successfully described. Fermilab E-906 will probe the kinematic dependence of this ratio with better resolution and extend it to higher x. We have developed a hybrid model that includes both perturbative and non-perturbative contributions to the proton sea. A meson cloud formalism is used to represent the non-perturbative fluctuation of the proton into meson-baryon states. We include perturbative processes by using a statistical model that uses Fock states of quarks, antiquarks and gluons to represent the parton distributions of the 'bare' hadrons in the meson cloud. We compare our results to the E866 data.