Flavor analysis of nucleon electromagnetic form factors

Abstract

We have performed an evaluation of the individual up- and down-flavor contributions to the nucleon electromagnetic form factors within a relativistic constituent-quark model. It is found that the theoretical parameter-free predictions agree surprisingly well with recent experimental data from a flavor decomposition of the proton and neutron electromagnetic form factors for momentum transfers up to $Q^2\sim\;$3.5 GeV$^2$. It means that in this regime three-quark valence degrees of freedom dominate and other contributions, such as explicit mesonic effects, can at most play a minor role.