Flavour and Spin of the Proton and the Meson Cloud

Abstract

We present a complete set of formulas for longitudinal momentum distribution functions (splitting functions) of mesons in the nucleon. It can be applied in the framework of convolution formalism to the deep-inelastic structure functions (quark distributions) of the nucleon viewed as a system composed of virtual 'mesons' and 'baryons'. Pseudoscalar and vector mesons as well as octet and decuplet baryons are included. In contrast to many approaches in the literature the present approach ensures charge and momentum conservation by the construction. We present not only spin averaged splitting functions but also helicity dependent ones, which can be used to study the spin content of the nucleon. The cut-off parameters of the underlying form factors for different vertices are determined from high-energy particle production data. This information allows one to calculate the flavour and spin content of the nucleon. The value of the Gottfried Sum Rule obtained from our model (S_G = 0.224) nicely agrees with that obtained by the NMC. In addition, we calculate the x-dependence of the \bar d - \bar u asymmetry and get an impressive agreement with a recent fit of Martin-Stirling-Roberts. The calculated axial coupling constants for semileptonic decays of the octet baryons agree with the experimental data already with SU(6) wave function for the bare nucleon. Although we get improvements for the Ellis-Jaffe Sum Rules for the proton and neutron in comparison to the naive quark model, the MCM is not sufficient to reproduce the experimental data.