Polarized antiquark flavor asymmetry in Drell–Yan pair production

Abstract

We investigate the role of the flavor asymmetry of the nucleon's polarized antiquark distributions in Drell-Yan lepton pair production in polarized nucleon-nucleon collisions at HERA (fixed-target) and RHIC energies. It is shown that the large polarized antiquark flavor asymmetry predicted by model calculations in the large-N_c limit (chiral quark-soliton model) has a dramatic effect on the double spin asymmetries in high mass lepton pair production, as well as on the single spin asymmetries in lepton pair production through $W^\pm$-bosons at $M^2 = M_W^2$.