Measurement of the strange sea distribution using neutrino charm production

A high-statistics study by the Columbia-Chicago-Fermilab-Rochester Collaboration of opposite-sign dimuon events induced by neutrino-nucleon scattering at the Fermilab Tevatron is presented. A sample of 5044 νμ and 1062 ν¯μ induced μ∓μ± events with Pμ1≥9 GeV/c, Pμ2≥5 GeV/c, 30≤Eν≤600 GeV, and 〈Q2〉=22.2 GeV2/c2 is observed. The data support the slow-rescaling model of charm production with a value of mc=1.31±0.24 GeV2/c2. The first measurement of the Q2 dependence of the nucleon strange quark distribution xs(x) is presented. The data yield the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix element ‖Vcd‖=0.209±0.012 and the nucleon fractional strangeness content ηs=0.064−0.007+0.008.Received 4 August 1992DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.70.134©1993 American Physical Society