Connected and Disconnected Sea Partons from CT18 Parametrization of PDFs

Abstract

The separation of the connected and disconnected sea partons, which were uncovered in the Euclidean path-integral formulation of the hadronic tensor, is accommodated with an alternative parametrization of the non-perturbative parton distribution functions in the CT18 global analysis. This is achieved with the help of the distinct small $x$ behaviours of these two sea partons and the constraint from the lattice calculation of the ratio of the strange momentum fraction to that of the $\bar{u}$ or $\bar{d}$ in the disconnected insertion. The whole dataset of CT18 is used in this CT18CS fit. The impact of the recent SeaQuest data on the $\bar{d}(x)-\bar{u}(x)$ distribution of CT18CS is also discussed. The separate momentum fractions for the valence, the connected sea and disconnected sea of $u$ and $d$, the strange and the gluon partons are presented at $\mu =1.3$ GeV for the first time. They can be compared term-by-term with systematic error controlled lattice calculations.

Comments: Revised manuscript accepted for publication in PRD