Semi-inclusive Λ production and generalized sullivan processes

In this paper, we suggest that semi-inclusive Λ production with a high energy electron or muon beam may be employed as an effective way to pin down the possible importance of the generalized Sullivan process, in which the virtual photon may strike and smash the meson in the cloud surrounding the target proton. The role of such generalized Sullivan processes in deep inelastic scattering (DIS) has been exploited recently in connection with the observed violation of the Gottfried sum rule as well as with the so-called “proton spin crisis”. Our present numerical results indicate that, in the kinematic region characterized typically by small x, large z, and a small specific range of y (with the parton variables x, y, and z defined in the standard manner), the contribution from Sullivan processes may indeed be of numerical importance as compared to that due to the fragmentation process.