Determination of Strange Sea Quark Distributions from Fixed-target and Collider Data

Abstract

We present an improved determination of the strange sea distribution in the nucleon with constraints coming from the recent charm production data in neutrino-nucleon deep-inelastic scattering by the NOMAD and CHORUS experiments and from charged current inclusive deep-inelastic scattering at HERA. We demonstrate that the results are consistent with the data from the ATLAS and the CMS experiments on the associated production of $W^\pm$-bosons with $c$-quarks. We also discuss issues related to the recent strange sea determination by the ATLAS experiment using LHC collider data.