Nucleon spin structure at very high x

Abstract

Dyson–Schwinger equation treatments of the strong interaction show that the presence and importance of nonpointlike diquark correlations within the nucleon are a natural consequence of dynamical chiral symmetry breaking. Using this foundation, we deduce a collection of simple formulae, expressed in terms of diquark appearance and mixing probabilities, from which one may compute ratios of longitudinal-spin-dependent u- and d-quark parton distribution functions on the domain x≃1. A comparison with predictions from other approaches plus a consideration of extant and planned experiments shows that the measurement of nucleon longitudinal spin asymmetries on x≃1 can add considerably to our capacity for discriminating between contemporary pictures of nucleon structure.