Sea quark surprise reveals deeper complexity in proton spin puzzle
Published Date: 3/15/2019
Source: phys.org
New data from the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) add detail—and complexity—to an intriguing puzzle that scientists have been seeking to solve: how the building blocks that make up a proton contribute to its spin. The results, just published as a rapid communication in the journal Physical Review D, reveal definitively for the first time that different "flavors" of antiquarks contribute differently to the proton's overall spin—and in a way that's opposite to those flavors' relative abundance.