Flavor asymmetry in polarized proton-deuteron Drell-Yan process

Abstract

We discuss the possibility of finding polarized antiquark flavor asymmetry in Drell-Yan processes. We find that the difference between polarized proton-proton and proton-deuteron Drell-Yan cross sections should provide valuable information on the polarized flavor asymmetry. Numerical results indicate that the asymmetry effects are conspicuous especially in the large-x_F region. Our analysis is important for the transversity distributions because the flavor asymmetry cannot be found by inclusive lepton scattering and W-production processes.