Abstract
We demonstrate that a nonzero strangeness contribution to the spacelike electromagnetic form factor of the nucleon is evidence for a strange-antistrange asymmetry in the nucleon's light-front wave function, thus implying different nonperturbative contributions to the strange and antistrange quark distribution functions. A recent lattice QCD calculation of the nucleon strange quark form factor predicts that the strange quark distribution is more centralized in coordinate space than the antistrange quark distribution, and thus the strange quark distribution is more spread out in light-front momentum space. We show that the lattice prediction implies that the difference between the strange and antistrange parton distribution functions, $s(x)-\bar{s}(x)$, is negative at small-$x$ and positive at large-$x$. We also evaluate the strange quark form factor and $s(x)-\bar{s}(x)$ using a baryon-meson fluctuation model and a novel nonperturbative model based on light-front holographic QCD. This procedure leads to a Veneziano-like expression of the form factor, which depends exclusively on the twist of the hadron and the properties of the Regge trajectory of the vector meson which couples to the quark current in the hadron. The holographic structure of the model allows us to introduce unambiguously quark masses in the form factors and quark distributions preserving the hard scattering counting rule at large-$Q^2$ and the inclusive counting rule at large-$x$. Quark masses modify the Regge intercept which governs the small-$x$ behavior of quark distributions, therefore modifying their small-$x$ singular behavior. Both nonperturbative approaches provide descriptions of the strange-antistrange asymmetry and intrinsic strangeness in the nucleon consistent with the lattice QCD result.
Highlights
The unveiling of nucleon structure in terms of fundamental quark and gluonic degrees of freedom (d.o.f.) is a main goal of nuclear and particle physics
We demonstrate that a nonzero strangeness contribution to the spacelike electromagnetic form factor of the nucleon is evidence for a strange-antistrange asymmetry in the nucleon’s light-front wave function, implying different nonperturbative contributions to the strange and antistrange quark distribution functions
The nonperturbative dynamics of the strange-antistrange quark asymmetry sðxÞ − sðxÞ poses a challenging theoretical problem. It has become of major interest in both experimental and phenomenological studies, because of its important role in understanding strong-interaction dynamics and because the sðxÞ − sðxÞ asymmetry is an important input for testing electroweak theory and new physics models
Summary
The unveiling of nucleon structure in terms of fundamental quark and gluonic degrees of freedom (d.o.f.) is a main goal of nuclear and particle physics. We will examine in this article the behavior of Fs1ðQ2Þ and sðxÞ − sðxÞ using the nonperturbative structure of light-front holographic QCD (LFHQCD), a semiclassical approach to relativistic bound state equations which follows from the holographic embedding of light-front dynamics in a higher dimensional gravity theory, with the constraints imposed by the underlying superconformal algebraic structure [28,29,30,31,32,33] This approach incorporates a nontrivial connection to the hadron spectrum and to the Regge trajectories predicted by the model.
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