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## Description

 Title: Probing the flavor dependence of proton's light-quark sea in the SeaQuest experiment at Fermilab Author(s): Dove, Jason Director of Research: Peng, Jen-Chieh Doctoral Committee Chair(s): Makins, Naomi Doctoral Committee Member(s): Shelton, Jessie; Abbamonte, Peter Department / Program: Physics Discipline: Physics Degree Granting Institution: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Degree: Ph.D. Genre: Dissertation Subject(s): nuclear physics proton fixed target parton distribution function Fermilab deep-inelastic scattering E906 SeaQuest Abstract: Surprisingly large flavor asymmetry of the light-quark sea in the proton was reported in deep-inelastic scattering and Drell-Yan experiments. The Bjorken-$x$ dependence of the $\bar{d}/\bar{u}$ ratio extracted from the Fermilab E866 experiment also revealed an intriguing drop at the highest values of $x$. The Fermilab E906/SeaQuest experiment was designed to measure $\bar{d}/\bar{u}$ with improved accuracy at high Bjorken-$x$. By detecting high-mass dimuon events produced in the interaction of 120 GeV proton beam with liquid hydrogen (LH$_2$) and deuterium (LD$_2$) targets, the SeaQuest experiment probes the $\bar{d}/\bar{u}$ ratio up to $x\approx 0.45$. Data collection has been completed and the status of data analysis for SeaQuest is presented. Two different methods for extracting the LD$_2$/LH$_2$ Drell-Yan cross section ratios for $0.1\leq x \leq 0.45$ are presented and the results are in reasonable agreement. These ratios allow for the extraction of $\bar{d}/\bar{u}$ revealing an absence of the drop at large $x$ reported earlier by E866. Results from this work are compared with various theoretical models for the flavor structure of the nucleon sea. Issue Date: 2020-07-23 Type: Thesis URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/109313 Rights Information: Copyright 2020 Jason Dove Date Available in IDEALS: 2021-03-05 Date Deposited: 2020-12
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