Understanding the proton spin "puzzle" with a new "minimal" quark model

We investigate the spin structure of the nucleon in an extended Jaffe-Lipkin quark model. In addition to the conventional $3q$ structure, different $(3q)(Q\bar{Q})$ admixtures in the nucleon wavefunction are also taken into account. The contributions to the nucleon spin from various components of the nucleon wavefunction are discussed. The effect due to the Melosh-Wigner rotation is also studied. It is shown that the Jaffe-Lipkin term is only important when antiquarks are negatively polarized. We arrive at a new "minimal" quark model, which is close to the naive quark model, in order to understand the proton spin "puzzle".Comment: 19 latex pages, Published in Eur.Phys.J.

Nucleon Transversity Distribution from Azimuthal Spin Asymmetry in Pion Electroproduction

The azimuthal asymmetry observed by the HERMES collaboration in semi-inclusive pion production in deep inelastic scattering of unpolarized positron on the longitudinally polarized proton target, can provide information of the quark transversity distributions of the nucleon. We show that the quark transversity distributions predicted both by the light-cone quark-spectator-diquark model and by a pQCD inspired model can give consistent descriptions of the available HERMES data for the analyzing powers $A_{UL}^{\sin \phi}$ and $A_{UL}^{\sin 2 \phi}$ for $\pi^+$ and $\pi^-$ productions. We also show that the two models give similar predictions of $A_{UL}^{\sin \phi}$ for $\pi^+$ production, whereas they give very different predictions of $A_{UL}^{\sin \phi}$ for $\pi^-$ production at large $x$. Further precision measurement of $A_{UL}^{\sin \phi}$ for $\pi^-$ production can provide a decisive test of different models.Comment: 11 latex pages, 1 figure, version to appear in PR

Flavor Asymmetry of Nucleon Sea from Detailed Balance

In this study, the proton is taken as an ensemble of quark-gluon Fock states. Using the principle of detailed balance, we find $\bar{d}-\bar{u} \approx 0.124$, which is in surprisingly agreement with the experimental observation.Comment: 4 pages and no figures. Talk presented at the Third Circum-Pan-Pacific Symposium on "High Energy Spin Physics", Oct. 8-13, 2001, Beijing, Chin

Eigenvalue Comparisons for Boundary Value Problems of the Discrete Elliptic Equation

In this paper we study a boundary value problem for a discrete elliptic equation. The focus will be on the structure of the spectrum of this problem and the existence of a positive eigenvector corresponding to the smallest eigenvalue. Comparison results for the eigenvalues are also established as the coefficients of the problem changes

The Flavor and Spin Structure of Hyperons from Quark Fragmentation

We systematically study the hadron longitudinal polarizations of the octet baryons at large $z$ from quark fragmentations in $e^+e^-$-annihilation, polarized charged lepton deep inelastic scattering (DIS) process, and neutrino (antineutrino) DIS process, based on predictions of quark distributions for the octet baryons in the SU(6) quark-spectator-diquark model and a perturbative QCD based counting rule analysis. We show that the $e^+e^-$-annihilation and polarized charged lepton DIS process are able to distinguish between the two different predictions of the hyperon polarizations. We also find that the neutrino/antineutrino DIS process is ideal in order to study both the valence content of the hyperons and the antiquark to hyperon (quark to anti-hyperon) fragmentations, which might be related to the sea content of hyperons.Comment: 32 latex pages, 11 figures, a misprint in Table 1 corrected, reference updated, to appear in PR

Λ\Lambda, Λˉ\bar{\Lambda} Polarization and Spin Transfer in Lepton Deep-Inelastic Scattering

The flavor and helicity distributions of the $\Lambda$ and $\bar{\Lambda}$ hyperons for both valence and sea quarks are calculated in a perturbative QCD (pQCD) based model. We relate these quark distributions to the fragmentation functions of the $\Lambda$ and $\bar{\Lambda}$, and calculate the $z$-dependence of the longitudinal spin transfer to the $\Lambda$ and $\bar{\Lambda}$ in lepton deep-inelastic scattering (DIS). It is shown that the spin transfer to the $\Lambda$ is compatible with the first HERMES results at DESY and further tests are suggested. We also make predictions for the $z$-dependence of the $\Lambda$ and $\bar{\Lambda}$ longitudinal polarizations in neutrino (antineutrino) DIS processes. We investigate the sea contribution to the fragmentation functions, and we test a possible scenario where sea quarks in $\Lambda$ (or sea antiquarks in $\bar{\Lambda}$) are negatively polarized, whereas sea antiquarks in the $\Lambda$ (or sea quarks in $\bar{\Lambda}$) are positively polarized. The asymmetry of the polarized fragmentation functions of sea quarks and antiquarks to $\Lambda$ and $\bar{\Lambda}$ provides a way to understand the different behaviour between the $\Lambda$ and $\bar{\Lambda}$ spin transfers observed in the recent E665 experiment at FNAL.Comment: 23 latex pages, 5 figures, references added to the last version, to appear in Eur. Phys. J.