Neutrino Dimuon Production and the Strangeness Asymmetry of the Nucleon

Abstract

We have performed the first global QCD analysis to include the CCFR and NuTeV dimuon data, which provide direct constraints on the strange and anti-strange parton distributions, $s(x)$ and $\bar{s}(x)$. To explore the strangeness sector, we adopt a general parametrization of the non-perturbative $s(x),\bar{s}(x)$ functions satisfying basic QCD requirements. We find that the strangeness asymmetry, as represented by the momentum integral $[S^{-}]\equiv {\int }_0^{1}x[s(x)-\bar{s}(x)]dx$, is sensitive to the dimuon data provided the theoretical QCD constraints are enforced. We use the Lagrange Multiplier method to probe the quality of the global fit as a function of $[S^{-}]$ and find $-0.001<[S^{-}]<0.004$. Representative parton distribution sets spanning this range are given. Comparisons with previous work are made.

23 pages, 4 figures; expanded version for publication