Isovector unpolarized quark distribution in the nucleon in the large-N_c limit

Abstract

We calculate the isovector (flavor-nonsinglet) unpolarized quark- and antiquark distributions in the nucleon at a low normalization point in the large-N_c limit. The nucleon is described as a soliton of the effective chiral theory. The isovector distribution appears in the next-to-leading order of the 1/N_c-expansion. Numerical results for the quark- and antiquark distributions compare well with the parametrizations of the data at a low normalization point. This large-N_c approach gives a flavor asymmetry of the antiquark distribution (violation of the Gottfried sum rule) in good agreement with the measurements.

31 pages, LaTeX, 1 table, 4 figures included using epsf