Gluons and sea quarks in the proton at low scales

Abstract

We study the evolution of parton distributions down to low scales by considering several of their Mellin moments. For the initial conditions, we use a broad array of current parton density fits. Confirming earlier findings in the literature, we conclude that current determinations of parton distributions are incompatible with the idea that gluon or antiquark densities are generated by purely perturbative radiation as it is encoded in the DGLAP evolution equations.