Quark helicity distributions from longitudinal spin asymmetries in muon-proton and muon-deuteron scattering

Double-spin asymmetries for production of charged pions and kaons in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic muon scattering have been measured by the COMPASS experiment at CERN. The data, obtained by scattering a 160 GeV muon beam off a longitudinally polarised NH_3 target, cover a range of the Bjorken variable x between 0.004 and 0.7. A leading order evaluation of the helicity distributions for the three lightest quarks and antiquark flavours derived from these asymmetries and from our previous deuteron data is presented. The resulting values of the sea quark distributions are small and do not show any sizable dependence on x in the range of the measurements. No significant difference is observed between the strange and antistrange helicity distributions, both compatible with zero. The integrated value of the flavour asymmetry of the helicity distribution of the light-quark sea, \Delta u-bar - \Delta d-bar, is found to be slightly positive, about 1.5 standard deviations away from zero.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure

The Spin-dependent Structure Function of the Proton g_1^p and a Test of the Bjorken Sum Rule

The inclusive double-spin asymmetry, A_1^p, has been measured at COMPASS in deepinelastic polarised muon scattering off a large polarised NH3 target. The data, collected in the year 2007, cover the range Q2 > 1 (GeV/c)^2, 0.004 < x < 0.7 and improve the statistical precision of g_1^p(x) by a factor of two in the region x < 0.02. The new proton asymmetries are combined with those previously published for the deuteron to extract the non-singlet spin-dependent structure function g_1^NS(x,Q2). The isovector quark density, Delta_q_3(x,Q2), is evaluated from a NLO QCD fit of g_1^NS. The first moment of Delta_q3 is in good agreement with the value predicted by the Bjorken sum rule and corresponds to a ratio of the axial and vector coupling constants g_A/g_V = 1.28+-0.07(stat)+-0.10(syst).Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure