Inclusive production of meson resonances and the sea-quark distributions in the proton

Abstract

We have extended the application of the recombination model to the production of meson resonances. The x distributions of mesons produced in the pp reactions, including resonances, were found to display certain simple relations, which are independent of specific assumptions about the sea-quark distributions. These predictions can be used both to examine the model and to differentiate between the distributions of strange and nonstrange seaquarks. In the smaller-x region the shapes of meson inclusive distributions sensitivity depend on the sea-quark distribution. Because in the pseudoscalar-meson case, that is just in the same region where contamination from the resonance decay is serious, we use resonance production to determine directly the sea-quark distributions. If we assume that the sea-quark distributions of all three flavors have the same x dependence, with only the normalization of the strange-quark distribution being suppressed, good agreement with the available data can be achieved. And, with the distribution of seaquarks known, the shape of the inclusive distribution for meson production can then be determined without any further adjustable parameters.