Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Whirlpools in the Sea: Polarization of Antiquarks in a Spinning Proton

1977; American Physical Society; Volume: 39; Issue: 18 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1103/physrevlett.39.1116

1092-0145

F. E. Close, Dennis Sivers,

High-Energy Particle Collisions Research

We argue that the sea of virtual quark-antiquark pairs in a proton is polarized. Quantum chromodynamics allows a valence quark to emit a gluon which then produces pairs. If the parent quark in this process exhibits a ${(1\ensuremath{-}x)}^{3}$ behavior as $x\ensuremath{\rightarrow}1$ then the antiquark with helicity the same as the original quark will have a leading ${(1\ensuremath{-}x)}^{5}$ distribution. Implications for the counting rules and for polarized Drell-Yan annihilation are discussed.