Dynamics of light antiquarks in the proton

Abstract

We present a comprehensive analysis of the recent data from the E866 experiment at Fermilab on Drell-Yan production in pD and pp collisions, which indicates a non-trivial x dependence for the asymmetry between ū and d̅ quark distributions in the proton. The relatively fast decrease of the asymmetry at large x suggests the important role played by the chiral structure of the nucleon, in particular the πN and πΔ components of the nucleon wave function. At small x the data require an additional non-chiral component, which may be attributed to the Pauli exclusion principle, as first suggested by Field and Feynman.