Towards a unified picture of constituent and current quarks

Abstract

Using a simple picture of the constituent quark as a composite system of point-like partons, we construct the parton distributions by a convolution between constituent quark momentum distributions and constituent quark structure functions. We evaluate the latter at a low hadronic scale with updated phenomenological information, and we build the momentum distributions using well-known quark models. The resulting parton distributions and structure functions are evolved to the experimental scale and good agreement with the available DIS data is achieved. When compared with a similar calculation using non-composite constituent quarks, the accord with experiment of the present calculation becomes impressive. We therefore conclude that DIS data are consistent with a low energy scenario dominated by composite, mainly non-relativistic constituents of the nucleon.