Can the polarization of the strange quarks in the proton be positive ?

Recently, the HERMES Collaboration at DESY, using a leading order QCD analysis of their data on semi-inclusive deep inelastic production of charged hadrons, reported a marginally positive polarization for the strange quarks in the proton. We argue that a non-negative polarization is almost impossible.Comment: 6 pages, latex, minor changes in the discussion after Eq. (9

Single spin asymmetries in DIS

We consider possible mechanisms for single spin asymmetries in inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering (DIS) processes with unpolarized leptons and transversely polarized nucleons. Tests for the effects of non-zero \bfk_\perp, for the properties of spin dependent quark fragmentations and for quark helicity conservation are suggested.Comment: 5 pages, LaTeX, no figures. Revised version, to be published in Phys. Rev. D. Some equations and statements added to clarify text and notation

Resonant Production of Scalar Diquarks at the Next Generation Electron-Positron Colliders

We investigate the potential of TESLA and JLC/NLC electron-positron linear collider designs to observe diquarks produced resonantly in processes involving hard photons.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, coded in RevTEX, uses epsfi

Models for the Polarized Parton Distributions of the Nucleon

Polarized deep inelastic scattering (DIS) data are analyzed in leading and next-to-leading order of QCD within the common `standard' scenario of polarized parton distributions with a flavor-symmetric light sea (antiquark) distribution $\delta\bar{q}$, and a completely SU(3)$_f$ broken `valence' scenario with totally flavor-asymmetric light sea densities $(\delta\bar{u}\neq\delta\bar{d}\neq\delta\bar{s})$. The latter flavor-broken light sea distributions are modelled with the help of a Pauli-blocking ansatz at the low radiative/dynamical input scales of $\mu_{\rm LO(NLO)}^2=0.26$ (0.40) GeV$^2$ which complies with predictions of the chiral quark-soliton model and expectations based on the statistical parton model as well as with the corresponding, well established, flavor-broken unpolarized sea ($\bar{d}>\bar{u}$). Present semi-inclusive DIS data cannot yet uniquely discriminate between those two flavor-symmetric and flavor-broken polarized light sea scenarios.Comment: 39 pages, LaTe

Nuclear Antishadowing in Neutrino Deep Inelastic Scattering

The shadowing and antishadowing of nuclear structure functions in the Gribov-Glauber picture is due respectively to the destructive and constructive interference of amplitudes arising from the multiple-scattering of quarks in the nucleus. The effective quark-nucleon scattering amplitude includes Pomeron and Odderon contributions from multi-gluon exchange as well as Reggeon quark-exchange contributions. We show that the coherence of these multiscattering nuclear processes leads to shadowing and antishadowing of the electromagnetic nuclear structure functions in agreement with measurements. This picture leads to substantially different antishadowing for charged and neutral current reactions, thus affecting the extraction of the weak-mixing angle $\theta_W$. We find that part of the anomalous NuTeV result for $\theta_W$ could be due to the nonuniversality of nuclear antishadowing for charged and neutral currents. Detailed measurements of the nuclear dependence of individual quark structure functions are thus needed to establish the distinctive phenomenology of shadowing and antishadowing and to make the NuTeV results definitive.Comment: 38 pages, 15 figure

Scheme Independence of g1p(x,Q2)g_1^p (x, Q^2)

We work with two general factorization schemes in order to explore the consequences of imposing scheme independence on $g_1^p (x, Q^2)$. We see that although the light quark sector is indifferent to the choice of a particular scheme, the extension of the calculations to the heavy quark sector indicates that a scheme like the $\bar{MS}$ is preferable.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures. To appear in the Brief Reports of Phys. Rev.

The spin dependence of high energy proton scattering

Motivated by the need for an absolute polarimeter to determine the beam polarization for the forthcoming RHIC spin program, we study the spin dependence of the proton-proton elastic scattering amplitudes at high energy and small momentum transfer.We examine experimental evidence for the existence of an asymptotic part of the helicity-flip amplitude phi_5 which is not negligible relative to the largely imaginary average non-flip amplitude phi_+. We discuss theoretical estimates of r_5, essentially the ratio of phi_5 to phi_+, based upon extrapolation of low and medium energy Regge phenomenological results to high energies, models based on a hybrid of perturbative QCD and non-relativistic quark models, and models based on eikonalization techniques. We also apply the model-independent methods of analyticity and unitarity.The preponderence of evidence at available energy indicates that r_5 is small, probably less than 10%. The best available experimental limit comes from Fermilab E704:those data indicate that |r_5|<15%. These bounds are important because rigorous methods allow much larger values. In contradiction to a widely-held prejudice that r_5 decreases with energy, general principles allow it to grow as fast as ln(s) asymptotically, and some models show an even faster growth in the RHIC range. One needs a more precise measurement of r_5 or to bound it to be smaller than 5% in order to use the classical Coulomb-nuclear interference technique for RHIC polarimetry. As part of this study, we demonstrate the surprising result that proton-proton elastic scattering is self-analysing, in the sense that all the helicity amplitudes can, in principle, be determined experimentally at small momentum transfer without a knowledge of the magnitude of the beam and target polarization

New anomalous trajectory in Regge theory

We show that a new Regge trajectory with \alpha_{f_1} (0) \approx 1 and slope \alpha_{f_1}'(0) \approx 0 explains the features of hadron-hadron scattering and photoproduction of the rho and phi mesons at large energy and momentum transfer. This trajectory with quantum numbers P = C = +1 and odd signature can be considered as a natural partner of the Pomeron which has even signature. The odd signature of the new exchange leads to contributions to the spin-dependent cross sections, which do not vanish at large energy. The links between the anomalous properties of this trajectory, the axial anomaly and the flavor singlet axial vector f_1 (1285) meson are discussed.Comment: 20 pages, REVTeX, 8 figures (9 eps files), version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Polarized Parton Distribution Functions in the Nucleon

Polarized parton distribution functions are determined by using world data from the longitudinally polarized deep inelastic scattering experiments. A new parametrization of the parton distribution functions is adopted by taking into account the positivity and the counting rule. From the fit to the asymmetry data A_1, the polarized distribution functions of u and d valence quarks, sea quarks, and gluon are obtained. The results indicate that the quark spin content is \Delta\Sigma=0.20 and 0.05 in the leading order (LO) and the next-to-leading-order (NLO) MS-bar scheme, respectively. However, if x dependence of the sea-quark distribution is fixed at small x by "perturbative QCD" and Regge theory, it becomes \Delta \Sigma=0.24 ~ 0.28 in the NLO. The small-x behavior cannot be uniquely determined by the existing data, which indicates the importance of future experiments. From our analysis, we propose one set of LO distributions and two sets of NLO ones as the longitudinally-polarized parton distribution functions.Comment: 51 pages, REVTeX, aps.sty, aps12.sty, epsfig.sty, prabib.sty, revtex.sty, revtex.cls, 17 eps figures. Submitted for publication. Email: [email protected]