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# Theory of hybrid systems. II. The symmetrized product and redefined Lie bracket of quantum mechanics

## 1 Introduction

The Hermitian operators $`\widehat{q}`$ and $`\widehat{p}`$, acting in the Hilbert space of states, represent coordinate and momentum of quantum mechanical system and correspond to the coordinate $`q`$ and momentum $`p`$ of classical mechanical system. For these operators it should hold $`[\widehat{q},\widehat{p}]=i\mathrm{}\widehat{I}`$. This is one part of the quantization procedure other parts of which are the following. One has to say which operator should correspond to, let say, $`q^np^m`$ of classical mechanics. That is where the problem of symmetrized product (ordering rule) of quantum mechanics firstly enters. Namely, one is not willing to accept $`\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m`$ because this operator, in contrast to the involved ones, is not the Hermitian. (With $``$, which will be sometimes omitted, we represent ordinary product - successive application, of operators.) One has to define new operation, denoted by $``$, according to which the product of $`\widehat{q}^n`$ and $`\widehat{p}^m`$ will be the Hermitian. The most convenient way for doing that is by using already existing operations of addition, ordinary multiplication and multiplication by numbers. With this new operation the algebraic structure of quantum mechanics appears in its rudimentary form. In Cohen (1966) and Kerner and Sutcliffe (1970) one can find a short review of different propositions for symmetrized product while in Shewell (1959) there is a critical discussion of many ordering rules introduced in there cited references.

On the other hand, the classical mechanical variables have structure of both the algebra and Lie algebra. The Lie product, or bracket, of classical mechanics is the Poisson bracket:

$$\{f(q,p),g(q,p)\}=\frac{f(q,p)}{q}\frac{g(q,p)}{p}\frac{g(q,p)}{q}\frac{f(q,p)}{p},$$
(1)
where $`f(q,p)`$ and $`g(q,p)`$ belong to the set of classical variables. Its importance comes from the fact that it appears in the dynamical equation (as well as in all transformations due to symmetries). The expression:

$$\frac{\rho (q,p,t)}{t}=\{H(q,p),\rho (q,p,t)\},$$
(2)
is the Liouville equation where $`\rho (q,p,t)`$ is distribution representing state and $`H(q,p)`$ is the Hamiltonian of classical system.

It is desired to equip the set of quantum mechanical observables not just with the algebraic (symmetrized) product, but with the Lie algebraic product as well, i.e., one has to introduce the quantum analogue of the Poisson bracket. After Dirac (1958), the canonical quantization prescription says that the Poisson bracket of classical variables has to be translated into the $`\frac{1}{i\mathrm{}}`$ times the commutator of corresponding quantum observables. The most important place where the commutator appears is the von Neumann equation:

$$\frac{\widehat{\rho }(t)}{t}=\frac{1}{i\mathrm{}}[H(\widehat{q},\widehat{p}),\widehat{\rho }(t)].$$
(3)
It prescribes the way in which the state of quantum system $`\widehat{\rho }(t)`$ evolves due to the Hamiltonian $`H(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})`$. (Similar expressions hold for all symmetry transformations.) The last equation, of course, for a pure state ($`\widehat{\rho }(t)^2=\widehat{\rho }(t)`$) reduces to the Schrödinger equation.

Discussions on the algebraic and Lie algebraic structures in quantum mechanics one can find in Emch (1972) and Joseph (1970). In Arens and Babit (1965), Gotay (1980) and (1996) and Chernoff (1995), it was found that these two are interrelated in such a way that there is an obstruction to quantization which is manifested through the existence of some contradiction. Concretely, if the Lie bracket of quantum observables $`f_1(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})`$ and $`f_2(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})`$ is not equal to the Lie bracket of $`f_3(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})`$ and $`f_4(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})`$, while for the Poisson brackets of classical variables, to which these quantum observables should correspond, holds $`\{f_1(q,p),f_2(q,p)\}=\{f_3(q,p),f_4(q,p)\}`$, then there are two different operators that can be attributed to the same function and quantization can not be taken as selfconsistent. One can conclude, see Chernoff (1995), that the problem of quantization, which we have sketched above, is impossible.

This article is the second in series devoted to the development of theory of hybrid systems. Within it we shall define the symmetrized product of quantum mechanics at the first place. Then, by using this product, we shall be able to propose new Lie bracket of quantum mechanics. It will be the operatorial version of the Poisson bracket. In this way the algebraic and Lie algebraic aspect of quantum and classical mechanics will appear to be the same, as will become obvious latter. This result is of great importance for the foundation of theory of hybrid systems. However, since the ordering rule and Lie bracket are per se interesting and deserve detailed consideration, we shall approach them here without reference to the rest of theory of hybrid systems.

## 2 Definition of the symmetrized product

The most often used example of symmetrized product of two operators is $`\frac{1}{2}(\widehat{q}\widehat{p}+\widehat{p}\widehat{q})`$. This operator is the Hermitian and it corresponds to $`qp`$ of classical mechanics. But, this expression is susceptible of more than one meaning. Namely, one can look on $`\frac{1}{2}(\widehat{q}\widehat{p}+\widehat{p}\widehat{q})`$ as on “one half of the anti-commutator of $`\widehat{q}`$ and $`\widehat{p}`$” or one may take it as “the sum of all combinations of involved operators divided by the number of this combinations”. Different understandings of this generally accepted expression lead to constructions of nonequivalent expressions in other, not so trivial cases. In Kerner and Sutcliffe (1970) it was shown that there given propositions for symmetrized product start to differ for quartic monomials in $`\widehat{q}`$ and $`\widehat{p}`$.

We believe that by examining the way in which $`\frac{1}{2}(\widehat{q}\widehat{p}+\widehat{p}\widehat{q})`$ was constructed from $`\widehat{q}`$ and $`\widehat{p}`$, that are basic elements of the algebra, one gets better insight in how to solve the ordering problem in general. The procedure could be: $`\widehat{q}`$ and $`\widehat{p}`$ were multiplied as they were ordinary numbers, resulting in $`\widehat{q}\widehat{p}`$, and then some ordering procedure was applied, producing $`\frac{1}{2}(\widehat{q}\widehat{p}+\widehat{p}\widehat{q})`$. Taken in this way, the symmetrized product becomes a two step operation. The first step of symmetrized product is multiplication as in the case of c-numbers, with all well known properties except commutativity. The second step is the ordering procedure. We see it as the application of some superoperator $`𝐒`$ on the operatorial expressions consisting of $`\widehat{q}`$’s and $`\widehat{p}`$’s. Then, definition of the ordering procedure becomes a definition of superoperator $`𝐒`$ that acts on sequences of $`\widehat{q}`$ and $`\widehat{p}`$ assigning them, in some well defined manner, another sequences. By adopting this way of looking on symmetrized product, as we are going to do in what follows, it may be said that propositions of ordering rules given in literature differ since they (implicitly) use different superoperators - symmetrizers.

We shall use $`𝐒`$ defined as the linear superoperator that acts on sequences of $`\widehat{q}`$ and $`\widehat{p}`$ producing the sum of all different combinations of that operators and dividing the result by the number of these combinations. For example, $`𝐒(\widehat{q}^2\widehat{p}^2)=\frac{1}{6}(\widehat{q}^2\widehat{p}^2+\widehat{q}\widehat{p}\widehat{q}\widehat{p}+\widehat{q}\widehat{p}^2\widehat{q}+\widehat{p}\widehat{q}^2\widehat{p}+\widehat{p}\widehat{q}\widehat{p}\widehat{q}+\widehat{p}^2\widehat{q}^2)`$. In general, when $`𝐒`$ acts on sequence $`\widehat{q}\widehat{p}\widehat{p}\mathrm{}\widehat{p}\widehat{q}\widehat{q}`$, where the operator of coordinate appears $`n`$ times and the operator of momentum appears $`m`$ times, no matter how they are ordered in this sequence, the result will be:

$$\frac{n!m!}{(n+m)!}(\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m+\mathrm{}+\widehat{p}^m\widehat{q}^n).$$
(4)
It is understood that in the parenthesis there should be all different combinations of $`n+m`$ operators. Since there are $`n`$ operators of the one kind and $`m`$ of the other, there should be $`\frac{(n+m)!}{n!m!}`$ terms in the parenthesis.

More formally, the action of $`𝐒`$ on operatorial sequences is defined by:

$$𝐒(\widehat{q}^{a_1}\widehat{p}^{b_1}\mathrm{}\widehat{q}^{a_n}\widehat{p}^{b_n})=\frac{(\underset{i}{}a_i)!(\underset{i}{}b_i)!}{(_ia_i+_ib_i)!}\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{c_1,\mathrm{},c_m}{d_1,\mathrm{},d_m}}{_jc_j=_ia_i}}{_jd_j=_ib_i}}{\overset{}{}}\widehat{q}^{c_1}\widehat{p}^{d_1}\mathrm{}\widehat{q}^{c_m}\widehat{p}^{d_m},$$
(5)
where $`a_i,b_i,c_j,d_j𝐍_o,i\{1,\mathrm{},n\},j\{1,\mathrm{},m\},n𝐍,m=_ia_i+_ib_i+1`$ and where the prime over the sum indicates the absence of repeated combinations, i.e., if:

$$\widehat{q}^{c_1^{}}\widehat{p}^{d_1^{}}\mathrm{}\widehat{q}^{c_m^{}}\widehat{p}^{d_m^{}}=\widehat{q}^{c_1^{\prime \prime }}\widehat{p}^{d_1^{\prime \prime }}\mathrm{}\widehat{q}^{c_m^{\prime \prime }}\widehat{p}^{d_m^{\prime \prime }},$$

then $`c_j^{}=c_j^{\prime \prime }`$ and $`d_j^{}=d_j^{\prime \prime }`$ for all $`j`$. (The immediate consequence of (5) is that:

$$𝐒(\widehat{q}^{a_1}\widehat{p}^{b_1}\mathrm{}\widehat{q}^{a_n}\widehat{p}^{b_n})=𝐒(\widehat{q}^{c_1}\widehat{p}^{d_1}\mathrm{}\widehat{q}^{c_m}\widehat{p}^{d_m}),$$
(6)
whenever $`_ia_i=_jc_j`$ and $`_kb_k=_ld_l`$.) The linearity of $`𝐒`$ reads:

$$𝐒(k\widehat{q}^{a_1}\widehat{p}^{b_1}\mathrm{}\widehat{q}^{a_n}\widehat{p}^{b_n}+l\widehat{q}^{c_1}\widehat{p}^{d_1}\mathrm{}\widehat{q}^{c_m}\widehat{p}^{d_m})=$$

$$=k𝐒(\widehat{q}^{a_1}\widehat{p}^{b_1}\mathrm{}\widehat{q}^{a_n}\widehat{p}^{b_n})+l𝐒(\widehat{q}^{c_1}\widehat{p}^{d_1}\mathrm{}\widehat{q}^{c_m}\widehat{p}^{d_m}),$$
(7)
where $`a_i,b_i,c_j,d_j𝐍_o,i\{1,\mathrm{},n\},j\{1,\mathrm{},m\},n,m𝐍,k,l𝐂`$. The third defining property of $`𝐒`$ is:

$$𝐒(k\mathrm{}^m\widehat{q}^{a_1}\widehat{p}^{b_1}\mathrm{}\widehat{q}^{a_n}\widehat{p}^{b_n})=0,$$
(8)
where $`a_i,b_i𝐍_o,i\{1,\mathrm{},n\},n𝐍,k𝐂,m𝐍`$. Necessity of this property will be discussed in the next section.

For reasons that will be given in Sec. 4, the symmetrized product of observables and the partial derivatives of state $`\widehat{\rho }`$ is defined in way which is a slight modification of the above. Precisely, (5) becomes:

$$𝐒(\widehat{q}^{a_1}\widehat{p}^{b_1}(\frac{\widehat{\rho }}{\widehat{r}})^{e_1}\mathrm{}\widehat{q}^{a_n}\widehat{p}^{b_n}(\frac{\widehat{\rho }}{\widehat{r}})^{e_n})=$$

$$=\frac{(\underset{i}{}a_i)!(\underset{i}{}b_i)!}{(_ia_i+_ib_i+_ie_i)!}\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{c_1,\mathrm{},c_m}{d_1,\mathrm{},d_m}}{f_1,\mathrm{},f_m}}{_jc_j=_ia_i}}{_jd_j=_ib_i}}{_jf_j=_ie_i}}{\overset{}{}}\widehat{q}^{c_1}\widehat{p}^{d_1}(\frac{\widehat{\rho }}{\widehat{r}})^{f_1}\mathrm{}\widehat{q}^{c_m}\widehat{p}^{d_m}(\frac{\widehat{\rho }}{\widehat{r}})^{f_m},$$
(9)
where $`a_i,b_i,c_j,d_j𝐍_o,i\{1,\mathrm{},n\},j\{1,\mathrm{},m\},n𝐍,m=_ia_i+_jb_j+1,e_i,e_j\{0,1\}`$ and $`\widehat{r}\{\widehat{q},\widehat{p}\}`$. Modifications of the other properties follow straightforwardly. On the other hand, it is not needed to modify above expressions for the identity operator because it can be seen as $`\widehat{q}^o`$ or $`\widehat{p}^o`$.

The expression (4) should be taken, we propose, as corresponding to the monomial $`q^np^m`$ of classical mechanics and, since $`\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m`$ should represent the symmetrized product of $`n`$ operators of coordinate and $`m`$ operators of momentum, it was constructed from these $`n+m`$ operators in two steps (the first was to treat these operators as ordinary numbers, the meaning of which is to take $`\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m`$, or any other sequence of these $`n+m`$ operators, and the second step was to act with $`𝐒`$ on that). Then, by applying this procedure to a bit complicated case, one can easily answer the question what shall be the symmetrized product of two monomials, let say, $`\widehat{q}^a\widehat{p}^b`$ and $`\widehat{q}^c\widehat{p}^d`$ (both monomials are symmetrized in the above way). Namely, the result should be the expression gained after the expressions similar to (4) were multiplied as it would be done in the c-number case and after $`𝐒`$ was applied on that. After the first step, one would get:

$$\frac{a!b!}{(a+b)!}\frac{c!d!}{(c+d)!}(\widehat{q}^a\widehat{p}^b\widehat{q}^c\widehat{p}^d+\mathrm{}+\widehat{p}^b\widehat{q}^a\widehat{p}^d\widehat{q}^c),$$

where, in the parenthesis, there should be $`\frac{(a+b)!}{a!b!}\frac{(c+d)!}{c!d!}`$ terms on which $`𝐒`$ acts in the same way. The final result would be:

$$\frac{(a+c)!(b+d)!}{(a+b+c+d)!}(\widehat{q}^{a+c}\widehat{p}^{b+d}+\mathrm{}+\widehat{p}^{b+d}\widehat{q}^{a+c}).$$

Again, in the parenthesis, there should stand only different combinations of $`a+b+c+d`$ operators, where $`a+c`$ are of the one kind and $`b+d`$ are of the other. In more compact notation, the above reads:

$$(\widehat{q}^a\widehat{p}^b)(\widehat{q}^c\widehat{p}^d)=𝐒(𝐒(\widehat{q}^a\widehat{p}^b)𝐒(\widehat{q}^c\widehat{p}^d))=\widehat{q}^{a+c}\widehat{p}^{b+d}.$$

Consequently, the symmetrized product of quantum mechanical observables $`_ic_i\widehat{q}^{n_i}\widehat{p}^{m_i}`$ and $`_jd_j\widehat{q}^{r_j}\widehat{p}^{s_j}`$ should be:

$$(\underset{i}{}c_i\widehat{q}^{n_i}\widehat{p}^{m_i})(\underset{j}{}d_j\widehat{q}^{r_j}\widehat{p}^{s_j})=\underset{i}{}\underset{j}{}c_id_j\widehat{q}^{n_i+r_j}\widehat{p}^{m_i+s_j}.$$
(10)
The involved monomials are defined above.

## 3 Some properties of the symmetrized product

Our proposal of the symmetrized product is of the same complexity at the level of correspondence principle as are those given in literature: ordinary product, multiplication by numbers and summation all have to be used in order to define it.

Our proposal differs in that we find it necessary to look on the symmetrized product as on a two step operation. If it is so when the correspondence principle is under consideration, then we find it necessary to apply both of the mentioned steps in all other situations where the algebraic structure of quantum mechanics is addressed.

If one multiplies in ordinary manner operatorial expressions that were symmetrized in either way, then it does not come as surprise that result is no longer adequately ordered. Moreover, the omission at this place of the second step - the application of $`𝐒`$, makes such approaches inconsistent. That is because basic operatorial polynomials, which by definition correspond to classical mechanical variables, actually are symmetrical products of several $`\widehat{q}`$’s and $`\widehat{p}`$’s introduced at the beginning of quantization.

However, the ordered product is not always applied in the standard quantum mechanics, see Messiah (1961). For example, the calculation of dispersion asks to take ordinary product of operators instead of any of the proposed algebraical ones. This implicates that one has to be more specific in writing, let say, $`f(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})^2`$ since it is not obvious is it $`f(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})f(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})`$ or $`f(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})f(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})`$. There are situations where one needs the successive application of operators on states being uninterested in the algebraic aspect of quantum mechanics and vice versa. Needless to say, the last two expressions differ in general.

The algebra of quantum mechanical observables will be formally closed and there will be no purely algebraic obstructions with $``$ because the symmetrized product is a two step operation in all instances (when the correspondence with classical variables is established and when those quantum observables are multiplied) and because $`𝐒`$ is defined for sequences of $`\widehat{q}`$’s and $`\widehat{p}`$’s on the first place and not for operators in general like it is the case in Temple (!935). This means that, for the calculation of the product of general observables, it is necessary to express them like it was done on the LHS of (10). These, we believe, guarantee that one will not go out of the proposed way of symmetrization. Since all combinations of involved $`\widehat{q}`$ and $`\widehat{p}`$ appear on the RHS of (10), the symmetrized product of two symmetrized polynomials, which are the Hermitian, obviously will be invariant under the Hermitian conjugation.

It is necessary to declare the action of $`𝐒`$ on $`\mathrm{}`$ for it is dimensional constant, not a complex number. Metaphorically speaking, in contrast to the other constants it “incorporates” coordinate and momentum whose numbers of appearances in expressions are important from the point of view of $`𝐒`$. The property (8) prevents one to end with some ambiguity in case when the commutation relation $`[\widehat{q},\widehat{p}]=i\mathrm{}\widehat{I}`$ is used for the reexpression of operatorial sequences before the application of $`𝐒`$. For example, without (8), the symmetrized product of $`\frac{1}{2}(\widehat{q}\widehat{p}+\widehat{p}\widehat{q})`$ with itself will not be equal to the symmetrized product of $`\widehat{q}\widehat{p}\frac{i\mathrm{}}{2}`$ with itself, while $`\frac{1}{2}(\widehat{q}\widehat{p}+\widehat{p}\widehat{q})=\widehat{q}\widehat{p}\frac{i\mathrm{}}{2}`$. In abstract considerations we are proceeding, the Planck constant can appear only due to the above commutation relation; we ignore artificial situations when $`\mathrm{}`$ is introduced in expressions by hand. It could be said that, being the commutant of coordinate and momentum, $`\mathrm{}`$ is the quantum analogue of zero - the commutant of classical $`q`$ and $`p`$. And, since zero annihilates all sequences of $`q`$ and $`p`$ in $``$ product, the Planck constant should do the same for sequences of $`\widehat{q}`$ and $`\widehat{p}`$ in $``$ product.

Another similarity between $``$ and $``$ is that they are commutative. This characteristic of proposed symmetrized product follow directly from the fact that for the symmetrizer $`𝐒`$ only the numbers of $`\widehat{q}`$’s and $`\widehat{p}`$’s in a sequence on which it acts are relevant, in contrast to that how they are ordered in the sequence. These make us to believe that $``$ is defined in such a way to be the complete imitation of the product of classical mechanics.

Next remark is related to the situations where the form of operatorial expressions is fixed for some reasons. In Messiah (1961) it was said that ordered product of $`f(\widehat{\stackrel{}{r}})`$ and $`\widehat{\stackrel{}{p}}`$ has to be the one half of the anti-commutator of these two. Adapted to the present considerations, we have to show that:

$$\frac{1}{2}(\underset{n=o}{\overset{N}{}}c_n\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}+\widehat{p}\underset{n=o}{\overset{N}{}}c_n\widehat{q}^n)=\underset{n=o}{\overset{N}{}}c_n\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p},$$
(11)
since, with our proposal of symmetrized product, we do not want to contradict the well-known facts of standard quantum mechanics. In order to do that, we firstly transform the LHS of (11) into $`_{n=o}^Nc_n\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}\frac{i\mathrm{}}{2}\frac{}{\widehat{q}}_{n=o}^Nc_n\widehat{q}^n`$ and then reexpress each term on the RHS of (11) in the following way:

$$\underset{n=o}{\overset{N}{}}c_n\frac{1}{n+1}(\widehat{p}\widehat{q}^n+\widehat{q}\widehat{p}\widehat{q}^{n1}+\mathrm{}+\widehat{q}^{n1}\widehat{p}\widehat{q}+\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p})=$$

$$=\underset{n=o}{\overset{N}{}}c_n\frac{1}{n+1}(\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}i\mathrm{}n\widehat{q}^{n1}+\widehat{q}(\widehat{q}^{n1}\widehat{p}i\mathrm{}(n1)\widehat{q}^{n2})+\mathrm{}+\widehat{q}^{n1}(\widehat{q}\widehat{p}i\mathrm{})+$$

$$+\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p})=_{n=o}^Nc_n\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}i\mathrm{}_{n=o}^Nc_n\frac{1}{n+1}(n+(n1)+\mathrm{}+1)\widehat{q}^{n1}=$$

$$=\underset{n=o}{\overset{N}{}}c_n\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}\frac{i\mathrm{}}{2}\underset{n=o}{\overset{N}{}}c_nn\widehat{q}^{n1}=$$

$$=\underset{n=o}{\overset{N}{}}c_n\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}\frac{i\mathrm{}}{2}\frac{}{\widehat{q}}\underset{n=o}{\overset{N}{}}c_n\widehat{q}^n.$$

So, our proposal of symmetrized product is not in conflict with the mentioned demand since both sides of (11) are equal. Up to our knowledge, this is the only situation where the form of observable is a priori fixed.

Finally, one can show that:

$$\frac{}{\widehat{q}}(\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m)=n\widehat{q}^{n1}\widehat{p}^m,$$
(12)
the meaning of which is that the proposed algebraic structure of quantum mechanics is formally closed under the partial derivations \- the type of symmetrization is saved under the action of $`\frac{}{\widehat{q}}`$ and $`\frac{}{\widehat{p}}`$. This will be important for redefinition of the Lie bracket of quantum mechanics that we are going to discuss in the next section.

For this purpose, one has to show that, after the partial derivation of $`\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m`$, there will be the sum of all $`\frac{(n1+m)!}{(n1)!m!}`$ different combinations of $`n1`$ operators of coordinate and $`m`$ operators of momentum and that each of these combinations will appear $`n+m`$ times, so the multiplicative factor $`\frac{n!m!}{(n+m)!}`$, standing in front of the sum and coming from $`\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m`$, will be regularized.

It is trivial fact that, after the partial derivation of sequences of $`n`$ operators of coordinate and $`m`$ operators of momentum (that appear in $`\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m`$), there will be sequences of $`n1`$ operators of coordinate and $`m`$ operators of momentum (which is asked by $`\widehat{q}^{n1}\widehat{p}^m`$). After the partial derivation of $`\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m`$, there will be the sum of all different combinations of $`n1`$ operators of coordinate and $`m`$ operators of momentum since, by definition, in $`\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m`$, all different combinations of appropriate operators are present. Each of these $`\frac{(n+m1)!}{(n1)!m!}`$ different combinations needed for $`\widehat{q}^{n1}\widehat{p}^m`$ will follow after the derivation of many different combinations - sequences, appearing in $`\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m`$. All those sequences of $`\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m`$, that will give after derivation a particular sequence of $`\widehat{q}^{n1}\widehat{p}^m`$, have one more $`\widehat{q}`$. This “extra” $`\widehat{q}`$, that is going to be annihilated by derivation, can be on $`n+m`$ different places when those sequences are compared to the chosen sequence of $`\widehat{q}^{n1}\widehat{p}^m`$. (In other words, the sequences of $`\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m`$ that will be transformed by $`\frac{}{\widehat{q}}`$ in the chosen one differ from it only in one $`\widehat{q}`$, all other $`\widehat{q}`$’s and $`\widehat{p}`$’s are equally ordered. To visualize this, it is helpful to consider, for instance, $`\widehat{q}^{n1}\widehat{p}^m`$; it follows after derivation of: $`\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m`$, $`\widehat{q}^{n1}\widehat{p}\widehat{q}\widehat{p}^{m1}`$, $`\mathrm{}`$, $`\widehat{q}^{n1}\widehat{p}^{m1}\widehat{q}\widehat{p}`$ and $`\widehat{q}^{n1}\widehat{p}^m\widehat{q}`$ that are present in $`\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m`$. The mentioned extra $`\widehat{q}`$ in $`\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m`$ can be each of $`n`$ operators of coordinate, like it appears on $`n`$ different places. In the next $`m1`$ sequences, it is the $`\widehat{q}`$ among operators of momentum that is extra and, in the last combination, it $`\widehat{q}`$ standing on the right of $`\widehat{p}^m`$.) This means that each sequence of $`\widehat{q}`$’s and $`\widehat{p}`$’s needed for $`\widehat{q}^{n1}\widehat{p}^m`$ will follow $`n+m`$ times after the application of $`\frac{}{\widehat{q}}`$ on $`\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m`$. In this way one can convince oneself that (12) holds and, by proceeding in similar manner for the partial derivation with respect to the momentum and in the case of polynomials, one can show that the algebra of observables is formally closed under the action of $`\frac{}{\widehat{q}}`$ and $`\frac{}{\widehat{p}}`$.

## 4  The redefined Lie bracket of quantum mechanics

The symmetrized product we have proposed can be used in the classical mechanics instead of the standard algebraic multiplication of variables since the ordering rules have no effect in the case of the commutative algebra. So, one can say that the algebraic product of both mechanics is one and the same. Then, the difference between them is in the Lie bracket and, in what follows, we shall try to remedy this by intervening on this bracket of quantum mechanics. We propose the substitution of the commutator divided by $`i\mathrm{}`$ with the operatorial form of Poisson bracket:

$$\{f(\widehat{q},\widehat{p}),g(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})\}_𝐒=\frac{f(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})}{\widehat{q}}\frac{g(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})}{\widehat{p}}\frac{g(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})}{\widehat{q}}\frac{f(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})}{\widehat{p}}.$$
(13)
Nota bene, in difference to (1), the operators are involved in the last expression and symmetrized product stays instead of the ordinary one.

Before one addresses the obstruction to quantization mentioned in Sec. 1 and before reexpresses dynamical equation of quantum mechanics, one has to convince oneself that the just defined “symmetrized” Poisson bracket has all properties of the Lie product. To do this, one can proceed as follows. That $`\{,\}_𝐒`$ is linear one easily concludes remembering that the partial derivations and symmetrized product are linear operations. That it is anti-symmetric one can see directly from definition. By comparing the operatorial expression under consideration with the adequate one of classical mechanics, one finds that the partial derivations and symmetrized products of symmetrized operatorial expressions within $`\{,\}_𝐒`$ in complete imitate the partial derivations and ordinary products of c-number functions in $`\{,\}`$. So, the confirmation of the Jacoby identity rests on the analogy - each step of the calculation in the case of operators has the corresponding one in the c-number case.

Due to mentioned analogies, the symmetrized Poisson bracket would behave as derivative:

$$\{f(\widehat{q},\widehat{p}),g(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})h(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})\}_𝐒=$$

$$=\{f(\widehat{q},\widehat{p}),g(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})\}_𝐒h(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})+g(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})\{f(\widehat{q},\widehat{p}),h(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})\}_𝐒,$$
(14)
This can be checked by taking three monomials in $`\widehat{q}`$ and $`\widehat{p}`$. For $`f(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})=\widehat{q}^{a_1}\widehat{p}^{a_2}`$, $`g(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})=\widehat{q}^{b_1}\widehat{p}^{b_2}`$ and $`h(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})=\widehat{q}^{c_1}\widehat{p}^{c_2}`$, both sides of (14) will be $`(a_1(b_2+c_2)a_2(b_1+c_1))\widehat{q}^{a_1+b_1+c_11}\widehat{p}^{a_2+b_2+c_21}`$.

If one takes ordinary multiplied $`g(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})`$ and $`h(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})`$, then:

$$\{f(\widehat{q},\widehat{p}),g(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})h(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})\}_𝐒$$

$$\{f(\widehat{q},\widehat{p}),g(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})\}_𝐒h(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})+g(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})\{f(\widehat{q},\widehat{p}),h(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})\}_𝐒,$$

in general. One and the same product has to be used for all multiplications in $`\{,\}_𝐒`$ for the Leibniz rule to be satisfied.

The generalization of the symmetrized Poisson bracket for more than one degree of freedom is influenced by requirements coming from physics, see Prvanović and Marić (2000) and references therein. This topic we shall consider in the forthcoming article belonging to the series concerned with the foundation of theory of hybrid systems.

Given remarks make trivial the problem of possibility for obstruction to quantization based on the symmetrized Poisson bracket as the Lie product. If there was some equation for classical variables, then the same equation will hold for their quantum counterparts since the symmetrized product and the symmetrized Poisson bracket imitate the adequate operations in c-number case. Said in more descriptive way, the equation in quantum mechanics will hold since it differs from the corresponding equation of classical mechanics only in that there are hats above coordinate and momentum and there is $``$ instead of $``$. Consequently, this quantization is, we believe, unambiguous, i.e., obstruction free in toto.

Can the symmetrized Poisson bracket substitute the commutator in von Neumann equation (3) is the last question that we are going to address. Related to this are: how the operators representing states of quantum system can be expressed as depending on some functions of $`\widehat{q}`$ and $`\widehat{p}`$ and how should the symmetrizer $`𝐒`$ act on sequences formed of $`\widehat{q}`$, $`\widehat{p}`$ and partial derivatives of the state $`\widehat{\rho }`$. With the help of:

$$|q^{}q^{}|=\delta (qq^{})|qq|𝑑q=\delta (\widehat{q}q^{}),$$
(15)
and:

$$|q^{\prime \prime }q^{}|=e^{\frac{1}{i\mathrm{}}(q^{\prime \prime }q^{})\widehat{p}}|q^{}q^{}|=e^{\frac{1}{i\mathrm{}}(q^{\prime \prime }q^{})\widehat{p}}\delta (\widehat{q}q^{}),$$
(16)
one immediately finds that the pure state in general, i.e., $`|\psi =\psi (q)|q𝑑q`$, can be expressed as:

$$|\psi \psi |=\psi (q)\psi ^{}(q^{})|qq^{}|𝑑q𝑑q^{}=$$

$$=\psi (q)\psi ^{}(q^{})e^{\frac{1}{i\mathrm{}}(q^{\prime \prime }q^{})\widehat{p}}\delta (\widehat{q}q^{})𝑑q𝑑q^{}.$$
(17)
But, $`\delta (\widehat{q}q^{})`$ is neither polynomial nor analytical function of $`\widehat{q}`$. This means that it can not be expressed in the form $`_nc_n\widehat{q}^n`$ which is necessary according to (5) for a direct calculation of the symmetrized product. Supplementary defining property of the ordering rule for a novel situation, when $`𝐒`$ acts on sequences of $`\widehat{q}`$, $`\widehat{p}`$ and the partial derivatives of $`\delta (\widehat{q}q^{})`$ and/or the general state, are certainly needed. This property is (9) the meaning of which is that the partial derivatives of states are entities different from $`\widehat{q}`$ and $`\widehat{p}`$.

If the symmetrical product of $`\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m`$ and partial derivative of $`|\psi \psi |`$ is to be calculated, one should look for $`\frac{(n+m+1)!}{n!m!}`$ distinct combinations of involved operators. Concretely:

$$\widehat{p}\frac{|\psi \psi |}{\widehat{q}}=\frac{1}{2}(\widehat{p}\frac{|\psi \psi |}{\widehat{q}}+\frac{|\psi \psi |}{\widehat{q}}\widehat{p}),$$
(18)
and:

$$\widehat{q}^n\frac{|\psi \psi |}{\widehat{p}}=$$

$$\frac{1}{n+1}(\widehat{q}^n\frac{|\psi \psi |}{\widehat{p}}+\widehat{q}^{n1}\frac{|\psi \psi |}{\widehat{p}}\widehat{q}+\mathrm{}+\widehat{q}\frac{|\psi \psi |}{\widehat{p}}\widehat{q}^{n1}+\frac{|\psi \psi |}{\widehat{p}}\widehat{q}^n).$$
(19)
Then, one can easily show that:

$$\{\frac{\widehat{p}^2}{2m}+V(\widehat{q}),|\psi \psi |\}_𝐒=\frac{1}{i\mathrm{}}[\frac{\widehat{p}^2}{2m}+V(\widehat{q}),|\psi \psi |],$$
(20)
where $`V(\widehat{q})=_nc_n\widehat{q}^n`$. Instead of proving (20) in the coordinate representation, one can simply substitute $`\frac{}{\widehat{q}}`$ and $`\frac{}{\widehat{p}}`$ that appear on the LHS of (20) with $`\frac{1}{i\mathrm{}}[,\widehat{p}]`$ and $`\frac{1}{i\mathrm{}}[\widehat{q},]`$, respectively, and, by using (18) and (19), after few elementary steps one will find that the LHS and RHS of (20) are equal. Despite of being less interesting for physics, let us pay more attention on:

$$\{F(\widehat{q},\widehat{p}),|\psi \psi |\}_𝐒=\frac{1}{i\mathrm{}}[F(\widehat{q},\widehat{p}),|\psi \psi |],$$
(21)
where $`F(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})`$ is the general element of the quantum mechanical algebra. The analysis of (21) can start with considerations of some monomial $`\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m`$. In order to obtain the LHS of (21), according to (12), one, firstly, has to multiply symmetrically $`n\widehat{q}^{n1}\widehat{p}^m`$ and $`\frac{\widehat{\rho }}{\widehat{p}}`$, where $`\widehat{\rho }=|\psi \psi |`$, then to multiply symmetrically $`m\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^{m1}`$ and $`\frac{\widehat{\rho }}{\widehat{q}}`$ and, finally, to add these two. Due to (9), the LHS of (21) then becomes:

$$\frac{n!m!}{(n+m)!}(\widehat{q}^{n1}\widehat{p}^m\frac{\widehat{\rho }}{\widehat{p}}+\mathrm{}+\frac{\widehat{\rho }}{\widehat{p}}\widehat{p}^m\widehat{q}^{n1}(\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^{m1}\frac{\widehat{\rho }}{\widehat{q}}+\mathrm{}+\frac{\widehat{\rho }}{\widehat{q}}\widehat{p}^{m1}\widehat{q}^n)).$$
(22)
After substituting $`\frac{\widehat{\rho }}{\widehat{p}}`$ with $`\frac{1}{i\mathrm{}}[\widehat{q},\widehat{\rho }]`$ and $`\frac{\widehat{\rho }}{\widehat{q}}`$ with $`\frac{1}{i\mathrm{}}[\widehat{p},\widehat{\rho }]`$, one should look how to simplify (22). Some terms in (22) will be of the form $`\widehat{A}\widehat{q}(\widehat{q}\widehat{\rho })\widehat{q}\widehat{B}`$, where $`\widehat{A}`$ and $`\widehat{B}`$ represent (different) sequences of $`\widehat{q}`$’s and $`\widehat{p}`$’s and $`(\widehat{q}\widehat{\rho })`$ means that these two come from the commutator $`[\widehat{q},\widehat{\rho }]`$. But, such terms will be canceled by $`\widehat{A}\widehat{q}\widehat{q}(\widehat{\rho }\widehat{q})\widehat{B}`$ (which certainly should appear in (22)), where the minus sign comes from the commutator. Proceeding in this way for all other forms, one can find that many terms in (22) will mutually cancel each other. This holds for all terms except those where $`\widehat{\rho }`$ stands at the beginning or at the end of the sequence. Consequently, (22) is equal to:

$$\frac{1}{i\mathrm{}}\frac{n!m!}{(n+m)!}((\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m+\mathrm{}+\widehat{p}^m\widehat{q}^n)\widehat{\rho }\widehat{\rho }(\widehat{q}^n\widehat{p}^m+\mathrm{}+\widehat{p}^m\widehat{q}^n)),$$

which is nothing else than the RHS of (21) for the considered monomial. Then, due to the linearity of commutator and symmetrized Poisson bracket, (21) will hold for general $`F(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})`$, too.

It should be noticed that (20) will not hold for $`V(\widehat{q})=\widehat{q}^n`$ when $`n3`$ if the symmetrized product within Poisson bracket is taken to be the one half of the anti-commutator of involved operators. This is why we have defined $`𝐒`$ to be the superoperator that produces (19), i.e., defined by (9).

From (20) and (21), it follows that the dynamical equation of quantum mechanics can be reexpressed. Obviously, resulting equation is operatorial version of the Liouville equation:

$$\frac{\rho (\widehat{q},\widehat{p},t)}{t}=\{H(\widehat{q},\widehat{p}),\rho (\widehat{q},\widehat{p},t)\}_𝐒.$$
(23)
It is understood that the Hamiltonian is $`H(\widehat{q},\widehat{p})=_ic_i\widehat{q}^{n_i}\widehat{p}^{m_i}`$.

## 5 Concluding remarks

For the introduction of the symmetrized product that we have proposed it was necessary to look on the operators of coordinate and momentum as on the basic elements. The special position that coordinate and momentum have in mechanics has manifested itself in that all physically meaningful entities have to be defined, or expressed, via them. The algebraic and Lie algebraic products have to be defined, on the first place, with respect to the coordinate and momentum and not for the operators in general the particular examples of which would be $`\widehat{q}`$ and $`\widehat{p}`$. Only after observables are expressed in form of the functions of $`\widehat{q}`$ and $`\widehat{p}`$, then their algebraic or Lie algebraic product can be found. The numbers of appearances of $`\widehat{q}`$’s and $`\widehat{p}`$’s in operatorial sequences play the crucial role in such situations, just like degrees of $`q`$ and $`p`$ do in the c-number case.

As we have stressed, the only way to make the approach consistent and, we believe, to avoid ambiguities is to apply the same ordering procedure in all situations. If it was seen as a two step operation at the level of the correspondence principle, then it should be treated in the same manner in other occasions as well. And, moreover, we believe that the ordering procedure has to be taken as a two step operation if the Hermiticity of observables is requested.

The unavoidable second step of all multiplications, i.e., the symmetrizer $`𝐒`$, due to properties that it produces all distinct combinations of coordinate and momentum and annihilates $`\mathrm{}`$, makes the approach obstruction free. When the operators introduced at the beginning of quantization are looked from the point of view of either algebra or Lie algebra, there will be no contradictory statements because $`𝐒`$ within $``$ and $`\{,\}_𝐒`$ forms these two operations to be the complete imitation of the corresponding ones of classical mechanics.

At last, let us summarize in brief our proposition for the quantization. The basic elements of classical mechanical algebra: $`q`$, $`p`$ and $`1`$, should be mapped into: $`\widehat{q}`$, $`\widehat{p}`$ and $`\widehat{I}`$, respectively, where $`[\widehat{q},\widehat{p}]=\frac{1}{i\mathrm{}}\widehat{I}`$. The general element $`_ic_iq^{n_i}p^{m_i}`$ should be mapped in $`_ic_i\widehat{q}^{n_i}\widehat{p}^{m_i}`$. The ordinary product of $`f(q,p)=_ic_iq^{n_i}p^{m_i}`$ and $`g(q,p)=_jd_jq^{r_j}p^{s_j}`$ should be translated in (10), and their Lie product (1) should become (13). The dynamical equations for states, which are expressible via coordinate and momentum in both mechanics, should be (2) in classical mechanics and (23) in quantum mechanics.

If we neglect for the moment that classical mechanics is represented in this article with c-number functions, while quantum mechanics uses operatorial functions, then it could be said not only that classical and quantum mechanics are equivalent regarding the mathematical structures, but the algebraic and Lie algebraic products have the same realization for both mechanics since the symmetrized product and symmetrized Poisson bracket can be used without any problem instead of the ordinary ones in classical mechanics, as well. This we are going to use in the next article devoted to the formulation of theory of hybrid systems.


text:
# Improved Measurement of the 𝑑̄/𝑢̄ Asymmetry in the Nucleon Sea

## I Introduction

Recent measurements  have shown a large asymmetry in the distributions of up and down antiquarks ($`\overline{u}`$ and $`\overline{d}`$) in the nucleon. While no known symmetry requires $`\overline{u}`$ to equal $`\overline{d}`$, a large $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ asymmetry was not anticipated. The usual assumption was that the sea of quark-antiquark pairs is produced perturbatively from gluon splitting. Since the mass difference of the up and down quarks is small, nearly equal numbers of up and down pairs should result. Thus a large $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ asymmetry requires a non-perturbative origin for this effect.

The data from experiment E866/NuSea  at Fermilab were the first to demonstrate a strong Bjorken-$`x`$ dependence of the $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ ratio. In that earlier work, only data at fairly large dimuon mass were analyzed. In this paper we report results based on the entire data set and describe the details of the experimental apparatus and analysis procedure. These data cover a larger range of mass and Bjorken-$`x`$, and demonstrate consistency of the results for three different spectrometer settings. They also provide more accurate determinations of $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$, $`\overline{d}\overline{u}`$ and the integral of $`\overline{d}\overline{u}`$. The data are compared with several parton distribution function sets, and the implications of these results for various models that predict a $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ asymmetry are discussed.

There have been four other experimental studies  of the $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ asymmetry in the nucleon. The first measurement was performed by the New Muon Collaboration (NMC). NMC measured the cross section ratio for deep inelastic scattering (DIS) of muons from hydrogen and deuterium . Their extrapolated result for the integral of the difference of the proton and neutron structure functions is

$`{\displaystyle _0^1}\left[F_2^pF_2^n\right]{\displaystyle \frac{dx}{x}}=0.235\pm 0.026.`$ (1)
This result can be compared with the Gottfried Sum Rule (GSR) . The Gottfried Sum, $`S_G`$, can be expressed in terms of the parton distribution functions as

$`S_G`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle _0^1}\left[F_2^pF_2^n\right]{\displaystyle \frac{dx}{x}}`$ (2)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}+{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}{\displaystyle _0^1}\left[\overline{u}(x)\overline{d}(x)\right]𝑑x.`$ (3)
In the derivation of Eq. 2, charge symmetry was assumed. If it is also assumed that $`\overline{d}(x)𝑑x=\overline{u}(x)𝑑x`$, then one arrives at a GSR result of $`1/3`$, in disagreement with the NMC result. Rather, the NMC measurement implies

$`{\displaystyle _0^1}[\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)]𝑑x=0.148\pm 0.039.`$ (4)
The NMC measurement  was the first indication that there are more anti-down quarks in the proton than anti-up quarks.

In order to obtain the Gottfried Sum from the NMC data, an extrapolation was needed to account for contributions to the sum for $`x0.004`$. Since $`F_2/x`$ rises rapidly in this region, a sizable contribution to $`S_G`$ was expected. The small-$`x`$ extrapolation was checked by Fermilab E665 , which made a similar measurement as NMC except that they measured the ratio for $`10^6x0.3`$. Over the kinematic range where NMC and E665 overlap, their measurements agree. However, E665 determined that for $`x0.01`$ the value of $`2F_2^d/F_2^p1`$ was a constant $`0.935\pm 0.008\pm 0.034`$. While this could be interpreted as a difference between $`F_2^n`$ and $`F_2^p`$, it is usually thought to be the effect of nuclear shadowing in deuterium  which means that $`F_2^n/F_2^p2F_2^d/F_2^p1`$. Therefore it is difficult to measure $`F_2^n/F_2^p`$ in a model-independent way at low $`x`$.

Following the publication of the NMC result, it was suggested  that the Drell-Yan process  could provide a more direct probe of the light antiquark asymmetry of the nucleon. In the parton model, the Drell-Yan cross section at leading order is

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d^2\sigma }{dx_1dx_2}}=`$ (6)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{4\pi \alpha ^2}{9M^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}e_i^2\left[f_i(x_1)\overline{f}_i(x_2)+\overline{f}_i(x_1)f_i(x_2)\right],`$
where the sum is over all quark flavors, $`e_i`$ are the quark charges, $`f_i`$ are the parton distribution functions, and $`M`$ is the virtual photon or dilepton mass . Here $`x_1`$ and $`x_2`$ are the Bjorken-$`x`$ of the partons from the beam and target, respectively.

Two kinematic quantities commonly used to describe Drell-Yan events are the Feynman-$`x`$ ($`x_F`$) and the dilepton mass ($`M`$) which are defined as :

$$x_F=\frac{p_{||}^\gamma }{p^{\gamma ,max}}\frac{p_{||}^\gamma }{\sqrt{s}/2}=x_1x_2$$
(7)
and

$$M^2=Q^2x_1x_2s,$$
(8)
where $`p_{||}^\gamma `$ is the center-of-mass longitudinal momentum of the virtual photon, $`p^{\gamma ,max}`$ is its maximum possible value, and $`s`$ is the total four-momentum squared of the initial nucleons. The proton-deuterium Drell-Yan cross section can be expressed as

$`\sigma ^{pd}\sigma ^{pp}+\sigma ^{pn},`$ (9)
which ignores the small nuclear effects inside the deuterium nucleus. Using this approximation and assuming charge symmetry, the cross section ratio for Drell-Yan events produced in deuterium and hydrogen targets can be used to determine the ratio $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$.

The first experiment to use this idea was the NA51 experiment  at CERN. This experiment used the $`450`$ GeV/c proton beam from the CERN-SPS with liquid hydrogen and deuterium targets. The NA51 experiment was able to reconstruct almost 6,000 Drell-Yan events with the dimuon mass above $`4.3`$ GeV/c2, and from these data they obtained

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{d}}{\overline{u}}}|_{x=0.18}=1.96\pm 0.15\pm 0.19.`$ (10)
However, the NA51 spectrometer’s acceptance was peaked near $`x_F=0`$ and $`x=0.18`$. This, combined with their limited statistics, made it impossible to determine the $`x`$-dependence of the ratio.

Several groups have performed global fits to existing data from DIS, Drell-Yan, and other processes to generate parameterizations of parton distribution functions (PDFs) . Prior to the measurements by NMC and NA51 the usual assumption was that $`\overline{d}(x)=\overline{u}(x)`$. The PDFs were then revised to accommodate the NMC and NA51 data. While these measurements show that $`\overline{d}\overline{u}`$, neither imposed rigid constraints on the $`x`$-dependence of the $`\overline{d}(x)`$/$`\overline{u}(x)`$ asymmetry.

A better measurement of $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ is possible with Drell-Yan if the detector acceptance is largest for $`x_F>0`$, since the Drell-Yan cross section ratio is more sensitive to the target antiquark distribution in this kinematic regime. This increase in sensitivity results from the Drell-Yan cross section being dominated by the annihilation of a beam quark with a target antiquark in this kinematic regime. For $`x_1x_2`$, one obtains

$`\sigma ^{pp}{\displaystyle \frac{4}{9}}u(x_1)\overline{u}(x_2)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{9}}d(x_1)\overline{d}(x_2)`$ (11)
and

$`\sigma ^{pn}{\displaystyle \frac{4}{9}}u(x_1)\overline{d}(x_2)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{9}}d(x_1)\overline{u}(x_2).`$ (12)
¿From Eqs. 9, 11, and 12 it is a simple matter to derive

$$\frac{\sigma ^{pd}}{2\sigma ^{pp}}|_{x_1x_2}\frac{1}{2}\frac{\left[1+\frac{1}{4}\frac{d(x_1)}{u(x_1)}\right]}{\left[1+\frac{1}{4}\frac{d(x_1)}{u(x_1)}\frac{\overline{d}(x_2)}{\overline{u}(x_2)}\right]}\left[1+\frac{\overline{d}(x_2)}{\overline{u}(x_2)}\right].$$
(13)
This expression can be further simplified since $`d(x)4u(x)`$, resulting in

$$\frac{\sigma ^{pd}}{2\sigma ^{pp}}|_{x_1x_2}\frac{1}{2}\left[1+\frac{\overline{d}(x_2)}{\overline{u}(x_2)}\right].$$
(14)
This equation illustrates the sensitivity of the Drell-Yan cross section ratio to $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ for $`x_1x_2`$.

In FNAL E866/NuSea  the ratio of the Drell-Yan cross section for proton-deuteron interactions to that for proton-proton interactions was measured over a wide range of $`x`$ and other kinematic variables. This measurement in turn provided an accurate determination of $`\overline{d}(x)`$/$`\overline{u}(x)`$ and an independent determination of the integral of $`\left[\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)\right]`$ over the same $`x`$ region.

Recently, the HERMES collaboration  has reported a measurement of $`\overline{d}\overline{u}`$ over the range $`0.02<x<0.30`$, based on a measurement of semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering. The HERMES results are in good agreement with the results from FNAL E866/NuSea, but have limited precision.

In Ref. , we presented initial results of the FNAL E866/NuSea study of the light antiquark asymmetry in the nucleon sea, based on an analysis of approximately 40% of our data. Here we present the final results of the analysis of the full data set from the experiment.

## II Experimental Setup

FNAL E866/NuSea used an 800 GeV/c proton beam extracted from the Fermilab Tevatron accelerator and transported to the east beamline of the Meson experimental hall. The beam position and shape were measured using RF cavities and segmented-wire ionization chambers (SWICs). The final SWIC was located 1.7 m upstream of the target. The beam at this SWIC was typically 6 mm wide and 1 mm high (FWHM). The most important beam intensity measurement was made with a secondary emission monitor (SEM) located about 100 m upstream of the targets. In addition to the SEM, the beam intensity was monitored with a quarter-wave RF cavity and an ionization chamber. The nominal beam intensity ranged from $`5\times 10^{11}`$ to $`2\times 10^{12}`$ protons per 20 second spill, depending on the spectrometer magnet setting.

The proton beam passed through one of three physically identical, thin, stainless steel target flasks. These flasks were cylindrical in shape with hemispherical ends and insulated vacuum jackets. The flasks were 7.62 cm in diameter and 50.8 cm in length. The two end windows on each flask totaled 0.10 mm of stainless steel and 0.28 mm of titanium. One flask was filled with liquid deuterium, another was filled with liquid hydrogen, and the third was evacuated. The hydrogen target was 7% of an interaction length and 6% of a radiation length, and the deuterium target was 15% of an interaction length and 7% of a radiation length. The evacuated target was less than 0.2% of an interaction length and 1.4% of a radiation length. Both the temperatures and vapor pressures of the filled flasks were monitored.

All three flasks were mounted on a movable table so that the target could be changed during the 40 second gap between the 20 second beam spills. The normal target cycle consisted of twelve spills with five spills on the deuterium target, one spill on the empty flask, five spills on the hydrogen target and another spill on the empty flask. This frequent cycling of the targets minimized many systematic uncertainties.

At $`85^{}`$ to the beam direction there were a pair of four-element scintillator telescopes. These viewed the target through a hole in the heavy shielding enclosing the target area to monitor the luminosity, duty factor, data-acquisition live time, and to independently verify which target was in the beam.

The detector apparatus used in this experiment was the E605 dimuon spectrometer , shown in Fig. 1. While changes were made to the spectrometer for E866, the basic design has remained the same since the spectrometer was first used for E605 in the early 1980’s. Three large dipole magnets provide for the momentum analysis of energetic muons, while deflecting soft particles out of the acceptance. The magnetic fields are in the horizontal direction, bending the tracks in the vertical direction. The polarities and currents of the first two magnets were adjusted to select particular ranges of dimuon mass, while minimizing background rates in the drift chambers. The changes to the spectrometer for E866 were the installation of six new drift chamber planes at the first tracking station, a reconfigured absorber wall, two new hodoscope planes , and a new trigger system .

The first dipole magnet (SM0) was used to increase the opening angle of muon pairs when taking data with the magnets configured to have acceptance at the lowest mass. For the higher mass settings it was not energized.

A water-cooled copper beam dump was located at a distance of 1.73 m into the second magnet (SM12). The protons that passed through the target were absorbed in the 3.28-m-long dump. The beam dump was about 22 interaction lengths, or 230 radiation lengths, thick. It filled the magnet aperture in the horizontal direction for most of its length, but was a maximum of 25.4 cm high in the vertical direction. This allowed many of the muons of interest to travel above or below the beam dump, minimizing muon multiple scattering and energy loss.

Downstream of the beam dump was an absorber wall that completely filled the aperture of the magnet. This wall consisted of 0.61 m of copper followed by 2.74 m of carbon and 1.83 m of borated polyethylene. The effect of this wall, which was over thirteen interaction lengths and sixty radiation lengths long, was to absorb most of the produced hadrons, electrons, and gammas. Effectively only muons traversed the active elements of the spectrometer, allowing the use of high beam intensities while keeping the instantaneous number of hits in each drift chamber at an acceptable level.

The third magnet (SM3), located downstream of SM12 and the first tracking station, provided the magnetic field used for the momentum determination of the muons. The position of each muon was measured precisely at three tracking stations, one upstream and two downstream of SM3. Each tracking station consisted of three pairs of high-rate drift chambers, followed by horizontal and vertical scintillation hodoscopes used to generate the dimuon trigger. (The exception to this configuration was the absence of the hodoscope that provides horizontal position information after the second tracking station. This hodoscope was omitted to minimize multiple scattering between the second and third tracking stations.)

At the end of the spectrometer, behind shielding, was the fourth tracking station. It consisted of three planes of proportional tubes and a pair of hodoscope planes. The ring imaging Cherenkov counter (RICH) and two calorimeters, shown in Fig. 1, were not active in E866. The RICH was filled with helium to reduce multiple scattering between the second and third tracking stations. Summaries of the physical construction of the drift chambers, hodoscopes, and proportional tubes may be found in Ref. .

## III Trigger and Monitoring

The trigger was optimized to detect dimuon events originating from the target, while rejecting as many muons produced in the beam dump as possible. A new trigger system was implemented for E866 . It used the hodoscope signals to determine whether the event should be written to tape. The hits in the hodoscopes at stations 1, 2, and 4 that measured the vertical track positions were compared with the contents of a three-dimensional look-up table. This table was generated by Monte Carlo studies of dimuon events from the target. When the hits in the scintillators matched one of the pre-calculated dimuon trajectories, the trigger fired.

In addition to the standard physics triggers optimized to detect oppositely charged dimuon events from the targets, other triggers were prescaled to record a limited number of study events. These study events included single-muon events, events satisfying triggers that relied only on the hodoscope planes that provided horizontal position information, and other diagnostic triggers such as two like-sign muons from the target area that traveled down opposite sides (left and right) of the spectrometer.

For each 20 second beam spill, information important for analysis was recorded as part of the data stream. Beam intensity, position, size, and duty factor were recorded, as well as the pressure, temperature, and positions of the liquid targets, magnet voltages and currents, and various monitors used for calculating the readout deadtime. The beam position and size were stable throughout the experiment, well within the dimensions of the target flasks.

To better monitor the spectrometer performance and data quality, a portion of the data was analyzed in real time. The efficiency of each detector element and the overall track reconstruction efficiency were carefully studied. The wire chambers had average efficiencies of 96%. The individual hodoscopes used in the trigger were 99% efficient. The overall trigger efficiency was greater than 94%. Average trigger rates and live times for the deuterium target for the three spectrometer settings are given in Table I. Trigger rates were lower and live times higher for the hydrogen target (not shown).

## IV Analysis

The data were taken with three mass settings of the spectrometer magnets, designated as the high, intermediate, and low mass settings. Figure 2 shows the dimuon mass distributions for the three mass settings. The data were further divided based upon the magnet polarity and deuterium target purity. Six data sets contained data useful for this analysis and are summarized in Table II.

A first-pass analysis of the data was done on Fermilab’s IBM parallel-computing UNIX farms. Since only about 1% of the events written to tape reconstructed to form a dimuon event from the target, this analysis efficiently reduced the raw data tapes to a small number of data summary tapes (DSTs). After the individual tracks were fully reconstructed, muon pairs were identified. Fewer than 0.08% of all the fully reconstructed events contained more than two muon tracks from the target, resulting in virtually no combinatorial ambiguities.

A second-pass analysis of the DSTs was performed with many small changes to optimize the mass resolution and to study systematic effects. The results were written to PAW ntuples  for physics analysis.

Final cuts on the data were carefully studied to assure the removal of bad events, such as interactions outside of the target region. Events were also cut if the reconstructed tracks did not satisfy the trigger conditions. Each beam spill was required to meet certain quality criteria. The beam duty factor, readout live time, and beam intensity were all required to exceed minimum values.

A dimuon mass cut was used to remove the $`J/\psi `$ and $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ resonance families from the Drell-Yan continuum.***The typical one standard deviation mass resolution at the $`J/\psi `$ was 100 MeV/c2 and at the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ was 150 MeV/c2. The mass regions used for each data set are given in Table III. The number of events remaining in each of the data sets is shown in Table II. Figures 3, 4 and 5 show the resulting dimuon distributions for the three mass settings versus $`x_1`$ and $`x_2`$.

An important background was the random coincidence of two unrelated, oppositely charged muons. These events are referred to as randoms. The data were corrected for random dimuons by subtracting normalized samples of pairs of combined single muon events from the dimuon sample. The normalization was obtained from the measured yield of like-sign dimuons. The kinematics of the like-sign events were converted to those of opposite-sign pairs by reflecting the vertical angle of one of the tracks, which is equivalent to switching the charge of that muon. There was excellent agreement between the kinematic distributions of these simulated random dimuons and the measured like-sign pairs after reflection. Since most of the combined singles events reconstructed to a low effective dimuon mass, the randoms correction was largest in the low-mass data.

The average randoms correction for each mass setting is shown in Table IV. Estimates of single muon rates from J/$`\psi `$ and semi-leptonic charm decay, folded with the detector acceptance, are consistent with the observed number of randoms. Another possible background is the dual semi-leptonic decay of $`c\overline{c}`$ to a correlated $`\mu ^+\mu ^{}`$. However, both the mass and acceptance for these muon pairs are very low, leading to a negligible rate in the Drell-Yan mass regions selected above.

A rate-dependence correction was made for the inefficiency in event detection and reconstruction that occurred as a function of beam intensity. The primary source of this inefficiency is believed to be drift chamber hits lost due to pileup in the single hit TDCs. A decrease in reconstruction efficiency is clearly seen in the low-mass data shown in Fig. 6. The yield of Drell-Yan events per unit beam intensity decreases as the beam intensity increases.

In order to correct the data, the reconstruction efficiency as a function of the beam intensity must be determined. Fits were made to the event yield, normalized by the beam intensity, versus intensity. The data suggest that the reconstruction efficiency drops in a linear manner, and this basic assumption was justified by extensive Monte Carlo simulations. The reconstruction efficiency function was determined independently for each mass setting. The important quantity is not the absolute rate dependence inefficiency, but rather the difference between the inefficiencies for the hydrogen and deuterium targets. The fits to the low mass data are shown in Fig. 6. The final correction to $`\sigma ^{pd}/2\sigma ^{pp}`$ due to the rate dependence is given in Table IV. Another concern was that the rate dependence might also be a function of the kinematics of the dimuon event. This dependence was not observed in either the data or Monte Carlo events.

The data included in this analysis were taken over a period of five months. The deuterium target was filled twice during this time. The analysis of the first fill indicated that the deuterium purity was 99.99%. The second fill was of a slightly lesser quality. Table V shows the composition of the second deuterium fill, based on two independent assays. The purity of the liquid hydrogen target was better than 99.99%.

The density of the target material was determined from the vapor pressure of the gas above the liquid in both cryogenic systems. These pressures were constantly monitored and recorded in a database. The temperature of each flask was also recorded. From these data the average pressure was determined for each target and for each data set. These averaged close to 15 psi. Cryogenic data tables  for hydrogen and deuterium were used to convert the vapor pressures to the mass densities shown in Table VI.

The beam was attenuated as it interacted with the target material. Since the deuterium target had the higher density the beam intensity decreased more rapidly as it passed through the deuterium target. Calculations based on the proton-proton and proton-deuteron cross sections  were used to determine the ratio of the effective luminosity in the hydrogen target, $`A_h`$, to the effective luminosity in the deuterium target, $`A_d`$:

$$\frac{A_h}{A_d}=1.042\pm 0.002.$$
(15)
The acceptances for the events from the hydrogen and deuterium targets were not identical. Although the target-flask construction and location were identical, the attenuation of the beam through the targets meant that the average interaction points for the two targets were slightly different. The average interaction point in the deuterium target was $`0.5`$ cm upstream of that for the hydrogen target. Monte Carlo simulations were done to study the effects of beam attenuation on the acceptance. These studies gave a slight $`x_2`$-dependent correction. The maximum size of this correction was about 1% at the highest $`x_2`$ data points in the low and intermediate mass data. The typical correction was an order of magnitude smaller.

## V Calculation of $`\sigma ^{pd}/2\sigma ^{pp}`$

This experiment counted the number of dimuon events, $`N`$, from the hydrogen, deuterium, and empty targets. To compare the yields from these targets, the beam intensity for each spill was recorded and the integrated beam intensity, $`I`$, for each target was determined. Using the many small corrections previously described, the number of raw hydrogen dimuon events is

$$N_h=I_hA_ht_h\rho _h\left[\frac{H}{g}\right]\frac{d\sigma ^{pp}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_he_h+N_h^{\mathrm{BG}},$$
(16)
and the number of raw deuterium events is

$$N_d=I_dA_dt_d\rho _d\left[\frac{D}{g}\right]\frac{d\sigma ^{pd}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_de_d+N_d^{\mathrm{BG}}.$$
(17)
In the equations in this section, the subscripts indicate the target type, hydrogen, $`h`$, deuterium, $`d`$, and empty, $`e`$. The target length is $`t`$, $`H/g`$ and $`D/g`$ are the number of hydrogen and deuterium atoms per gram, $`\rho `$ is the target density, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the spectrometer acceptance for a given target, $`e`$ is the detector efficiency for a given target, and $`N^{\mathrm{BG}}`$ is the number of background events for a given target. Using these equations, one obtains

$$\frac{\sigma ^{pd}}{2\sigma ^{pp}}=\frac{1}{2}\frac{N_dN_d^{\mathrm{BG}}}{N_hN_h^{\mathrm{BG}}}\left[\frac{I_h}{I_d}\frac{A_h}{A_d}\frac{t_h}{t_d}\frac{\rho _h}{\rho _d}\frac{H/g}{D/g}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_h}{\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_d}\frac{e_h}{e_d}\right].$$
(18)
Note that the quantity in brackets is $`1`$.

The small amount of hydrogen contamination in the deuterium target after it was filled the second time was accounted for by altering Eq. 17 to read

$$N_d=I_dA_dt_d\rho _d^{}\frac{D}{g}\left(f_d\frac{d\sigma ^{pd}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}+f_h\frac{d\sigma ^{pp}}{d\mathrm{\Omega }}\right)\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_de_d+N_d^{\mathrm{BG}}.$$
(19)
In the equation above, $`f_d`$ and $`f_h`$ are the percent by volume of deuterium and hydrogen respectively in the deuterium target, and $`\rho _d^{}`$ is the density of the contaminated deuterium. The ratio of Drell-Yan cross sections is then

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma ^{pd}}{2\sigma ^{pp}}}=`$ (21)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{N_dN_d^{\mathrm{BG}}}{N_hN_h^{\mathrm{BG}}}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{I_h}{I_d}}{\displaystyle \frac{A_h}{A_d}}{\displaystyle \frac{t_h}{t_d}}{\displaystyle \frac{\rho _h}{f_d\rho _d^{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{H/g}{D/g}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_h}{\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_d}}{\displaystyle \frac{e_h}{e_d}}\right]{\displaystyle \frac{f_h}{2f_d}}.`$
The background events originated from two separate production mechanisms. The first source was Drell-Yan events produced from beam interactions with the target flask windows or other non-target materials. The number of these events was determined by normalizing the yields from the empty target. To properly normalize the number of empty-target events from downstream of the center of the target, attenuation of the beam through the target must be included. The second source of background events was the randoms ($`N_{\mathrm{target}}^{\mathrm{randoms}}`$) that were described previously. Combining these two sources gives

$$N_h^{\mathrm{BG}}=\left(N_e^{\mathrm{up}}+0.93N_e^{\mathrm{down}}\right)\frac{I_h}{I_e}+N_h^{\mathrm{randoms}}$$
(22)
for the hydrogen target background and

$$N_d^{\mathrm{BG}}=\left(N_e^{\mathrm{up}}+0.85N_e^{\mathrm{down}}\right)\frac{I_d}{I_e}+N_d^{\mathrm{randoms}}$$
(23)
for the deuterium target background. In the previous two equations the superscript on $`N_e`$ designates whether the empty target event originated from upstream or downstream of the center of the target. Typical empty target corrections are 12% for hydrogen and 5% for deuterium.

The output of the second-pass analysis was subjected to the quality cuts described earlier. Events that passed the cuts, after being corrected for random and non-target events as described above, were used to determine $`\sigma ^{pd}/2\sigma ^{pp}`$ versus $`x_2`$. These results are shown in Tables VII, VIII, and IX. The results shown for the high-mass data are slightly different from and supersede those previously published , due to minor improvements made to the rate dependence and acceptance calculations. The average values of $`x_2`$, $`x_F`$, $`p_T`$, and dimuon mass are also shown in Tables VII, VIII, and IX.

The average cross-section ratios for each mass setting are shown in Fig. 7. The three mass settings agree and are consistent within their systematic uncertainties. The result of averaging all of the mass settings is shown in Fig. 8 and Table XI.

Since this is a measurement of cross-section ratios, the only sources of systematic uncertainty that must be considered are those that affect the two targets differently. Because the targets were changed every few minutes, effects such as changes in detector efficiency or beam quality were minimized.

The important sources of systematic uncertainty include differences in the rate dependence, target flask length, target composition, beam attenuation, and acceptance. Table X shows the main sources of systematic uncertainty in the cross section ratio for each mass setting. Clearly the rate dependence and deuterium composition are the dominant uncertainties. Adding all of the sources of systematic uncertainties in quadrature, the total systematic uncertainty in the measured cross section ratio is less than 1%.

## VI Extraction of $`\overline{d}(x)/\overline{u}(x)`$

From the discussion in Section I, it is clear that $`\sigma ^{pd}/2\sigma ^{pp}`$ is closely related to $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$. However, the simple approximations that lead to Eq. 14 are not fully satisfied since the data cover a larger range in $`x_F`$. Therefore, an iterative process was used to extract $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ versus $`x_2`$ from the cross-section ratio.

The iterative process calculated $`\sigma ^{pd}/2\sigma ^{pp}`$ at leading order,The difference between next-to-leading-order and leading-order calculations of the cross section ratio in the region of interest is less than 2.1%. folded it with the experimental acceptance, and compared this calculated quantity with the measurement. Next, the $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ ratio was adjusted to improve the agreement. This process continued until the calculated $`\sigma ^{pd}/2\sigma ^{pp}`$ agreed with the measured ratio. The results of this method, using the combined data from all mass settings, are shown in Fig. 9 together with parameterizations from various PDFs .

It is clear from Eq. 4 that the calculation of $`\sigma ^{pd}/2\sigma ^{pp}`$ requires the PDF for each quark and antiquark in the proton as input. In the iterative process, it was assumed that existing PDF parameterizations accurately describe the valence and heavy-quark distributions as well as the quantity $`\overline{d}(x)+\overline{u}(x)`$, since these quantities have been constrained by previous measurements. The parameterizations used were CTEQ5M  and MRST .

For the calculated $`\sigma ^{pd}/2\sigma ^{pp}`$ to be compared to the measured $`\sigma ^{pd}/2\sigma ^{pp}`$, the acceptance of the spectrometer must be included in the calculation. To do this the cross section ratio was calculated for the $`x_1`$, $`x_2`$, and $`Q^2`$ values of every event that passed the analysis cuts. These calculated cross section ratios were then averaged over each $`x_2`$ bin.

As $`\sigma ^{pd}/2\sigma ^{pp}`$ was calculated for each iteration, it was assumed that $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ for the beam proton was the same as $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ for the target proton over the $`x_2`$ range of the data. For many events however, $`x_1`$ was greater than the maximum $`x_2`$ in the data, so some assumption was required for the value of $`\overline{d}(x_1)/\overline{u}(x_1)`$ for $`x_10.35`$. The effects of several different assumptions were investigated. The extracted $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ was not noticeably affected by any of these assumptions except at the highest $`x`$ values, where $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ was affected by less than five percent. The assumption finally used was $`\overline{d}(x_1)/\overline{u}(x_1)1.0`$ in the proton for $`x_1>0.35`$.

Once the quantity $`\overline{d}(x)/\overline{u}(x)`$ was determined, the quantity $`\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)`$ was calculated, again assuming that the quantity $`\overline{d}(x)+\overline{u}(x)`$ is well described by the parameterizations. So that $`\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)`$ could be integrated, the $`\overline{d}(x)/\overline{u}(x)`$ values were scaled to a fixed $`Q^2`$, with $`Q=7.35`$ GeV/c. The scaling procedure multiplied $`\overline{d}(x,Q)/\overline{u}(x,Q)`$ by the ratio $`\frac{\overline{d}(x,Q=7.35)/\overline{u}(x,Q=7.35)}{\overline{d}(x,Q)/\overline{u}(x,Q)}`$ as give by CTEQ5M. (There was no significant difference if MRST was used instead of CTEQ5M.) Figure 10 and Table XI show $`\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)`$ as a function of $`x`$. These data can be integrated over $`x`$ to provide $`_0^1\left[\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)\right]𝑑x=0.118\pm 0.012`$ for the proton. An extrapolation was made to account for the unmeasured region at low $`x`$. To extrapolate this integral from the measured region, which is shown in Fig. 11, to the unmeasured region, MRST and CTEQ5M were used to estimate the contribution for $`0x0.015`$ and it was assumed that the contribution for $`x0.35`$ was negligible. The uncertainty from this extrapolation was estimated to be 0.0041 which is half the difference between the contributions as given by MRST and CTEQ5M.

## VII Charge Symmetry and Shadowing

The analysis presented here assumes that the parton distributions of the nucleon obey charge symmetry: i.e., $`u_p(x)=d_n(x)`$, $`\overline{d}_p(x)=\overline{u}_n(x)`$, etc. This is consistent with the treatment in previous experiments  and global fits . The possibility that charge symmetry could be significantly violated (CSV) at the parton level has been discussed by several authors  and an extensive review was recently published .

Using the cloudy-bag model, it has been demonstrated  that a CSV effect of $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}5}\%`$ could exist for the “minority valence quarks” \[i.e., $`d_p(x)`$ and $`u_n(x)`$\] at $`x>0.4`$. In contrast, a study  of sea quark CSV showed it to be roughly a factor of 10 smaller than CSV for valence quarks. This was called into question in an analysis by Boros et al.  of the $`F_2`$ structure functions determined from muon and neutrino deep inelastic scattering, which concluded that $`\overline{d}_n(x)1.25\overline{u}_p(x)`$ at small $`x`$. However, Bodek et al.  showed that $`W`$ charge asymmetry measurements are inconsistent with the CSV effect identified by Boros et al. and consistent with the assumption of sea quark charge symmetry. Subsequently, a more recent work by Boros et al.  concluded that, after corrections are made for nuclear shadowing in the neutrino-induced data and the charm production threshold is treated explicitly using NLO QCD, the deep inelastic muon and neutrino scattering data provide no evidence for sea quark CSV.

Throughout the above analysis, we have assumed that nuclear effects in deuterium may be neglected, so that $`\sigma ^{pd}=\sigma ^{pp}+\sigma ^{pn}`$. This is consistent with the traditional approach, in which nuclear effects in deuterium are included in global parton distribution fits  and neglected in experimental analyses . However, it is important to estimate the magnitude of these corrections. The nuclear dependence of proton-induced Drell-Yan dimuon production at 800 GeV/c has been determined by FNAL E866/NuSea  and by FNAL E772 . These experiments measured the relative Drell-Yan cross sections per nucleon on a range of nuclear targets. Both experiments find little, if any, nuclear dependence for $`x>0.08`$. In this region, we may conservatively estimate that any nuclear effects in the proton-deuterium Drell-Yan cross section are $`<\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.5}`$%. However, at small $`x`$, the nuclear data show clear evidence for nuclear shadowing. In principle, one may use the parameterization $`\sigma ^{pA}=\sigma _0A^\alpha `$, where A is the atomic number, to extrapolate the observed effects in heavier nuclei to deuterium. But this will overestimate them, due to the anomalously large internucleon separation in the deuteron.

Alternatively, one may note that the shadowing effects seen in Drell-Yan by E866  and in deep inelastic scattering by NMC  are nearly equal, in spite of the different reaction mechanisms and momentum transfers of the two experiments, so we may use calculations of shadowing in deep inelastic scattering  to set the scale of the nuclear effects that may be present in our deuterium data. We estimate that shadowing implies a reduction of 0.9% to $`\sigma ^{pd}`$ in Eq. 9 for our smallest $`x_2`$ point, based on the calculations of Badelek and Kwiecinski . This would increase $`\overline{d}(x)/\overline{u}(x)`$ by $`<\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}`$% in our $`x`$ range. Our extracted value of $`(\overline{d}\overline{u})|_{x=0.026}`$ would increase by 26%. The correction to $`\overline{d}\overline{u}`$ drops very rapidly as $`x`$ increases. Our value for $`_{0.015}^{0.35}(\overline{d}\overline{u})𝑑x`$ would increase by 10%. The nuclear effects in deuterium, and hence the corrections to our results, are estimated to be approximately half as large in the calculations of Melnitchouk and Thomas . We conclude that the correction due to shadowing in deuterium may be comparable to our systematic uncertainty for our smallest $`x`$ values, and is much smaller than our systematic uncertainty for $`x>0.06`$.

## VIII Dependence on Other Kinematic Variables

The cross section ratio for deuterium versus hydrogen can be studied as a function of kinematic quantities other than $`x_2`$ . Figure 12 shows the ratio as a function of the transverse momentum of the dimuon. Studies of the data and of Monte Carlo acceptance calculations show that the observed shape versus $`p_T`$ is not due to acceptance differences between the targets or correlations with $`x_2`$.

For $`p_T`$ values below 3 GeV/c there may be evidence for a slight rise in the ratio with $`p_T`$, consistent with a small amount of additional multiple scattering of the incoming parton in deuterium. Above 3 GeV/c the ratio drops abruptly to near or below unity. This could be a signature for a change in reaction mechanism.

Recently, Berger et al.  calculated the $`p_T`$ dependence of the Drell-Yan cross section off an (isoscalar) nucleon to $`O(\alpha _{s}^{}{}_{}{}^{2})`$, including the modifications at small $`p_T`$ due to all-orders soft-gluon resummation. They find that the quark-antiquark annihilation process $`q\overline{q}\gamma ^{}X`$ dominates the Drell-Yan yield at small $`p_T`$, and the quark-gluon Compton scattering process $`qgq\gamma ^{}X`$ dominates at large $`p_T`$. This implies that the sensitivity of $`\sigma ^{pd}/2\sigma ^{pp}`$ to $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ arises primarily at small $`p_T`$, while the large-$`p_T`$ ratio measures the relative gluon densities in the proton and deuteron. The calculations indicate that the crossover between the two processes occurs at $`p_T`$ 2 to 3 GeV/c for the kinematics of the E866 data, close to the point where the cross-section ratio versus $`p_T`$ in Fig. 12 begins to drop. Thus, the E866 $`\sigma ^{pd}/2\sigma ^{pp}`$ results may also provide information regarding the gluonic composition of the nucleon, but such an analysis is outside the scope of the present paper.

The dependences of the deuterium to hydrogen ratio on $`x_1`$, $`x_F`$, and dimuon mass were also studied. Unlike $`p_T`$, these studies showed no independent dependence on these kinematic variables, reinforcing the conclusion that $`x_2`$ is the important variable for our data.

## IX Comparison to Other Results

The results of this experiment are much more extensive and precise than any other measurement of $`\overline{d}(x)/\overline{u}(x)`$. Other measurements of $`\overline{d}(x)/\overline{u}(x)`$ include the early measurement by NA51 and the recent result from the HERMES collaboration at DESY. These measurements are in general agreement with the E866 results as seen in Fig. 9 and Fig. 10. Even though the average $`Q^2`$ values of these measurements differ, comparisons can be made between them because the $`Q^2`$ dependence is small.

While the NA51 determination of $`\overline{d}(x)/\overline{u}(x)`$ was very similar to the method used by E866, the HERMES result was based on a measurement of semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering. The HERMES data have neither the coverage nor the precision of E866, but provide a truly independent confirmation of the results. Many of the systematic effects that are common to the NA51 and E866 Drell-Yan experiments do not affect the HERMES measurement.

These measurements of $`\overline{d}(x)/\overline{u}(x)`$ can be compared to the NMC DIS results by integrating $`\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)`$. Table XII summarizes the value of this integral over various $`x`$ ranges as parameterized by three global fits and as measured by E866. Table XIII summarizes three experimental determinations of this integral over all $`x`$ values. The E866 integral is smaller than those from NMC and HERMES, but consistent with them within the quoted uncertainties.

## X Structure of the Nucleon Sea

Ever since evidence for a flavor-asymmetric sea was reported by NMC and NA51, the groups performing global analysis for PDFs have required $`\overline{d}`$ to be different from $`\overline{u}`$. The NMC result constrains the integral of $`\overline{d}\overline{u}`$ to be $`0.148\pm 0.039`$, while the NA51 result requires $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ to be $`1.96\pm 0.25`$ at $`x=0.18`$. Clearly, the $`x`$-dependences of $`\overline{d}\overline{u}`$ and $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ were undetermined. Recently, several PDF groups have published  new parameterizations taking into account new experimental results, including the E866 data reported in Ref. . The parameterizations of the $`x`$ dependences of $`\overline{d}\overline{u}`$ are now strongly constrained by E866. As shown in Figure 9, these new parameterizations give significantly different shapes for $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ at $`x>0.15`$ compared to previous works such as CTEQ4M and MRS(r2).

It is interesting to note that the E866 data also affect the parameterization of the valence-quark distributions. Figure 13 shows the NMC data for $`F_2^pF_2^n`$ at $`Q^2`$ = 4 GeV$`{}_{}{}^{2}/`$c2, together with the fits of MRS(r2) and MRST. It is instructive to decompose $`F_2^p(x)F_2^n(x)`$ into contributions from valence and sea quarks:

$`F_2^p(x)F_2^n(x)=`$ (24)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}x\left[u_v(x)d_v(x)\right]+{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}x\left[\overline{u}(x)\overline{d}(x)\right].`$ (25)
As shown in Fig. 13, the E866 data provide a direct determination of the sea-quark contribution to $`F_2^pF_2^n`$. (The original E866 results from Ref.  are shown, rather than the more precise results reported here, because they were used as inputs for the MRST PDF fits.) In order to preserve the fit to $`F_2^pF_2^n`$, the MRST parameterization for the valence-quark distributions, $`u_vd_v`$, is significantly lower in the region $`x>0.01`$ than MRS(r2). Indeed, one of the major new features of MRST is that $`d_v`$ is now significantly larger than before for $`x>0.01`$. Although the authors of MRST attribute this to the new $`W`$-asymmetry data from CDF and the new NMC results on $`F_2^n/F_2^p`$, it appears that the new information on $`\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)`$ also has a direct impact on the valence-quark distributions.

Another implication of the E866 data is on the behavior of $`F_2^pF_2^n`$ at small $`x`$. In order to satisfy the constraint $`_0^1[u_v(x)d_v(x)]𝑑x=1`$, the MRST values of $`u_v(x)d_v(x)`$ at $`x<0.01`$ are now much larger than in previous PDFs. This is because the MRST parameterization of $`u_v(x)d_v(x)`$ at $`x>0.01`$ is smaller than before. As a consequence, $`F_2^pF_2^n`$ is increased at small $`x`$ and MRST predicts a large contribution to the Gottfried Sum from the small-$`x`$ ($`x<0.004`$) region, as shown in Fig. 14. If the MRST parameterization for $`F_2^pF_2^n`$ at $`x<0.004`$ were used together with the NMC data at $`x>0.004`$, one would deduce a larger value for the Gottfried Sum, and a value for the $`\overline{d}\overline{u}`$ integral smaller than that of Eq. (3). This would bring better agreement between the E866 and the NMC results on the $`\overline{d}\overline{u}`$ integral.

## XI Origins of the Nucleon Sea

The FNAL E866/NuSea results for $`\overline{d}(x)/\overline{u}(x)`$ and $`\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)`$ provide important constraints on models that attempt to describe the origins of the nucleon sea and its antiquark asymmetry. The early assumption of flavor symmetry in the nucleon sea presumed that the primary mechanism to generate the sea is gluon splitting into $`u\overline{u}`$ and $`d\overline{d}`$ pairs. Field and Feynman  suggested that the extra valence $`u`$ quark in the proton could lead to a suppression of $`gu\overline{u}`$ relative to $`gd\overline{d}`$ via Pauli blocking. Ross and Sachrajda  subsequently calculated that the effects of Pauli blocking are very small, and more recent calculations  have confirmed this result, even indicating that the overall effect of Pauli blocking may have the opposite effect to naive expectations. Given the small mass difference between the $`u`$ and $`d`$ quarks, we are left with the conclusion that perturbative QCD is incapable of generating a $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ asymmetry of the magnitude observed by E866. Thus, this effect must have a non-perturbative origin. As these nonperturbative mechanisms are considered, it is important to remember that they act in addition to the perturbative sources, which tends to dilute their effect. In effect the non-perturbative sources must be even stronger to account for the large asymmetries shown here. Several models have been proposed, including meson-cloud contributions, chiral-field or chiral-soliton effects, and instantons. Figure 15 compares the E866 results for $`\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)`$ to predictions of representative models of each of these types.

The coupling of the nucleon to virtual states containing isovector mesons provides a natural mechanism to produce a $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ asymmetry. For example, the valence quarks present in the $`\pi N`$ component of the proton have $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}=5`$. Since Thomas pointed out their importance , many authors have investigated virtual meson-baryon Fock states of the nucleon as the origin of the $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ asymmetry in the sea. Two recent reviews  provide a detailed survey of the literature.

Most calculations include contributions from $`\pi N`$ and $`\pi \mathrm{\Delta }`$ configurations. $`g_{\pi NN}`$ and $`g_{\pi N\mathrm{\Delta }}`$ are the well known pion-nucleon and pion-delta coupling constants, so the primary difference among the various calculations is the treatment of the $`\pi NN`$ and $`\pi N\mathrm{\Delta }`$ vertex form factors. As an example, Fig. 15 compares the present determination of $`\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)`$ to a pion-cloud-model calculation , which followed a procedure detailed by Kumano . In this calculation, dipole form factors were used, with $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ = 1.0 GeV for the $`\pi NN`$ vertex and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ = 0.8 GeV for the $`\pi N\mathrm{\Delta }`$ vertex. This calculation is typical of many of this type, in that the probability of finding the nucleon in a $`\pi N`$ configuration is approximately twice that of finding it in the $`\pi \mathrm{\Delta }`$ configuration . However, a recent calculation by Nikolaev et al. , also shown in Fig. 15, calls this into question. After isolating the contribution to inclusive particle production from Reggeon exchange, they conclude that the $`\pi N\mathrm{\Delta }`$ vertex should be substantially softer than previously believed, significantly reducing the probability of finding the nucleon in a $`\pi \mathrm{\Delta }`$ configuration. It adopts Gaussian form factors with cutoff parameters of 1 GeV-2 for the $`\pi NN`$ vertex and 2 GeV-2 for the $`\pi N\mathrm{\Delta }`$ vertex. This calculation predicts that the $`\pi N`$ component of the nucleon is slightly more probable than in Ref.  and the $`\pi \mathrm{\Delta }`$ component is very small. Thus, while it provides very good agreement with the E866 results for $`x>0.05`$, it contains significantly more singular behavior as $`x0`$. Overall, it predicts that

$$_0^1[\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)]𝑑x=0.177.$$
(26)
While the pion-cloud calculations above give a good description of the measured $`\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)`$, they are not able to predict $`\overline{d}(x)/\overline{u}(x)`$ since neither one attempts to describe the entire light antiquark sea. Rather, they assume that an additional symmetric contribution exists due to gluon splitting to bring the $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ ratio down to the measured value. These models do however indicate that pions make up a large part of the sea where the asymmetry is greatest. In contrast, Alberg et al.  have investigated whether or not the entire light antiquark sea might be understood in a meson-cloud picture. They find that, by considering $`\pi N`$ and $`\omega N`$ contributions, they can fit $`\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)`$ and simultaneously obtain a reasonable description of $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ at $`x<0.25`$. They also speculate that the addition of $`\pi \mathrm{\Delta }`$, $`\rho N`$ and $`\sigma N`$ terms would preserve the fit to $`\overline{d}\overline{u}`$, because of a cancellation between the $`\pi \mathrm{\Delta }`$ and $`\rho N`$ effects, and further improve the agreement for $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$.

A different approach to the $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ asymmetry, based on chiral perturbation theory, has been proposed by Eichten et al. . Within their model, the asymmetry arises from the coupling of constituent quarks to Goldstone bosons, such as $`ud\pi ^+`$ and $`du\pi ^{}`$. The excess of $`\overline{d}`$ over $`\overline{u}`$ is then simply due to the additional valence $`u`$ quark in the proton. Figure 15 includes the result of such a calculation, based on a calculation of $`\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)`$ at $`Q_0`$ = 0.5 GeV/c by Szczurek et al. , and evolved to $`Q^2=54\mathrm{GeV}^2/\mathrm{c}^2`$. It clearly predicts too soft an asymmetry. This arises because the model treats the three valence quarks equivalently at the initial scale, with each carrying 1/4 of the nucleon momentum. (Gluons carry the remaining 1/4.) The $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ ratio is then fixed by Clebsch-Gordan coefficients to be 11/7 for all $`x`$ at $`Q_0`$. With this input, QCD evolution requires $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ 11/7, independent of $`x`$ and $`Q`$. Hence, unlike the meson-baryon models, this model underpredicts $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ over much of the measured $`x`$ range. E866 results suggest that additional correlations between the chiral constituents of the nucleon need to be taken into account. The chiral quark-soliton model has been used by Pobylitsa et al.  to calculate $`\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)`$ in the large-$`N_c`$ limit. Figure 15 shows that this model reproduces the measured $`\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)`$ values well for $`x>0.08`$, but it overestimates the asymmetry at small $`x`$.

The spin and flavor structure of the nucleon sea have been investigated in the instanton model by Dorokhov and Kochelev . They derive expressions for the $`x`$ dependence of the instanton-induced sea that are appropriate for very large and very small $`x`$. They then combine the two asymptotic forms to obtain an ad hoc expression for all $`x`$,

$$\overline{d}_I(x)\overline{u}_I(x)=1.5A\frac{(1x)^7}{x\mathrm{ln}^2x},$$
(27)
where $`A`$ is an arbitrary constant which they chose to reproduce early NMC results. This form gives a poor description of our measured $`\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)`$, as shown in Fig. 15, where we have set $`A=0.163`$ to give $`_0^1(\overline{d}\overline{u})𝑑x=0.118`$. The model also predicts that instanton-induced antiquarks should arise primarily at large $`p_T`$ ($`p_{T}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}`$ 2 GeV$`{}_{}{}^{2}/c^2`$), but Fig. 12 shows that the asymmetry we have measured is not primarily a high-$`p_T`$ effect. Finally, the model predicts that $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}4`$ as $`x1`$ for the instanton-induced component of the nucleon sea. Clearly, the experimental results strongly contradict this, so this model would require a large additional contribution to the sea from $`gq\overline{q}`$ as $`x1`$ to bring $`\overline{d}/\overline{u}`$ into agreement. We do not know if an alternative formulation of the instanton model, especially including a more realistic treatment of the momentum dependence at finite $`x`$, might provide a better description of our results.

## XII Conclusions

While previous experiments have indicated that $`\overline{d}>\overline{u}`$, FNAL E866/NuSea was the first measurement of the $`x`$-dependence of the flavor asymmetry in the nucleon sea. This measurement has had an impact in several areas. The global parameterizations of the nucleon sea have changed to fit these new data. Surprisingly, this measurement, when used in conjunction with the NMC measurement, puts new and tighter constraints on the valence PDFs. This measurement has also provided a means of testing the predictions of several nonperturbative models . The unexpected sharp downturn in $`\overline{d}(x)/\overline{u}(x)`$ apparently back to unity at the large $`x`$ limits of this measurement has prompted interest  in extending the measurement of $`\sigma ^{pd}/2\sigma ^{pp}`$ to higher $`x`$. An experiment has been proposed  to make this measurement using the 120 GeV/c proton beam from the new Main Injector at Fermilab.

The primary goal of this experiment was the determination of $`\sigma ^{pd}/2\sigma ^{pp}`$ over a wide kinematic range. The combined result from all three mass settings is shown in Fig. 8 along with the curves from the calculated cross section ratio using various parameterizations. Parameterizations that do not include the first published results  from this experiment do not agree well with the data. ¿From the complete set of data, $`\overline{d}(x)/\overline{u}(x)`$, $`\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)`$, and $`[\overline{d}(x)\overline{u}(x)]𝑑x`$ of the proton were determined. These are shown in Figs. 9, 10, and 11. Models that explicitly include pions in the proton wavefunction  are relatively successful at reproducing the observed flavor asymmetry.

###### Acknowledgements.

We would like to thank the Fermilab Particle Physics, Beams, and Computing Divisions for their assistance in performing this experiment. We would also like to thank W. K. Tung of the CTEQ collaboration for providing us with the code necessary to calculate the next-to-leading-order cross-section ratio. This work was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy.