Do the E866 Drell Yan data change our picture of the chiral structure of the nucleon ?

Abstract

We revisit the evaluation of the pionic mechanism of the $\bar{u}-\bar{d}$-asymmetry in the proton structure function. Our analysis is based on the extended AGK unitarity relation between contributions of different mechanisms to the inclusive particle production and the total photoabsorption cross-section (i.e. the proton structure function). We reanalyze the role of isovector reggeons in inclusive production of nucleons and Delta isobars in hadronic reactions. We find rather large contribution of reggeon-exchange induced production of Delta isobars. This leaves much less room for the pion-exchange induced mechanism of $Δ$ production and provides a constraint on the $πN Δ$ form factor. The production of leading pions in proton-proton collisions at ISR puts additional constraints on the $πNN$ vertex form factors. An extension of the AGK-rules to reggeon exchange suggests a negligible contribution to the proton structure function from DIS off the exchanged $ρ,a_2$ reggeons. All these constraints are used then to estimate the pion content of the nucleon and allow to calculate parameter-free the $x$-dependence of $\bar d - \bar u$. We discuss the violation of the Gottfried Sum Rule and $\bar d$-$\bar u$ asymmetry and compare to the one obtained from the E866 experiment at Fermilab. We estimate the background to the pion structure function being determined by the ZEUS and H1 collaborations at HERA from leading neutron experiments.