Meson Cloud and SU(3) Symmetry Breaking in Parton Distributions

Abstract

We apply the Meson Cloud Model to the calculation of nonsinglet parton distributions in the nucleon sea, including the octet and the decuplet cloud baryon contributions. We give special attention to the differences between nonstrange and strange sea quarks, trying to identify possible sources of SU(3) flavor breaking. A analysis in terms of the $\kappa$ parameter is presented, and we find that the existing SU(3) flavor asymmetry in the nucleon sea can be quantitatively explained by the meson cloud. We also consider the ${\Sigma }^{+}$ baryon, finding similar conclusions.

Comments: 17 pages, LaTeX, 8 figures in .ps files