Charge Symmetry Breaking in the Valence Quark Distributions of the Nucleon

Abstract

Using a quark model, we study the effect of charge symmetry breaking on the valence quark distributions of the nucleon. The effect due to quark mass differences and the Coulomb interaction of the electrically charged quarks is calculated and, in contrast to recent claims, found to be small. In addition, we investigate the effect of charge symmetry breaking in the confining interaction, and in the perturbative evolution equations used to relate the quark model distributions to experiment. We find that both these effects are small, and that the strong charge symmetry breaking effect included in the scalar confining interactions may be distinguishable from that generated by quark mass differences.