Chiral Constituent quarks and their role in quark distribution functions of nucleon and pion

Abstract

We investigate the structure of constituent quarks and study implications for quark distribution functions of hadrons. Constituent quarks are constructed by dressing bare quarks with Goldstone bosons using the chiral quark model. We calculate resulting corrections to the twist-2 structure functions $f_1(x)$, $g_1(x)$ and $h_1(x)$. The Goldstone boson fluctuations produce a flavor asymmetry of the quark distribution in the nucleon in agreement with experimental data. They also generate significant depolarization effects which reduce the fraction of the nucleon spin carried by quarks. Corrections to the transversity spin structure function $h_1(x)$ differ from those to $g_1(x)$, and in particular we find a large reduction (40%) of the $d$-quark tensor charge, which is consistent with recent lattice calculations. We also study the pion structure function and find the momentum fraction carried by the sea quarks in the pion to be considerably larger than that in the nucleon.