Impact of LHC vector boson production in heavy ion collisions on strange PDFs

Understand

The extraction of the strange quark parton distribution function (PDF) poses a long-standing puzzle.

• Measurements from neutrino-nucleus deep inelastic scattering (DIS) experiments suggest the strange quark is suppressed compared to the light sea quarks, while recent studies of W/Z boson production at the LHC imply a larger strange component at small x values.
• As the parton flavor determination in the proton depends on nuclear corrections, e.g.
• from heavy-target DIS, LHC heavy ion measurements can provide a distinct perspective to help clarify this situation.