Neutrino dimuon production and the strangeness asymmetry of the nucleon

We have performed the first global QCD analysis to include the CCFR and NuTeV dimuon data, which provide direct constraints on the strange and antistrange parton distributions, s(x) and (s) over bar (x). To explore the strangeness sector, we adopt a general parametrization of the non-perturbative s( x), (s) over bar (x) functions satisfying basic QCD requirements. We find that the strangeness asymmetry, as represented by the momentum integral [S-] integral(1)(0) x[s(x)-(s) over bar (x)]dx, is sensitive to the dimuon data provided the theoretical QCD constraints are enforced. We use the Lagrange multiplier method to probe the quality of the global fit as a function of [S-] and find -0.001 < [ S-] < 0.004. Representative parton distribution sets spanning this range are given. Comparisons with previous work are made.