Phenomenology of the flavor-asymmetry in the light-quark sea of the nucleon

A phenomenological ansatz for the flavor-asymmetry of the light sea distributions of the nucleon, based on the Pauli exclusion principle, is proposed. This ansatz is compatible with the measured flavor-asymmetry of the unpolarized sea distributions; (d) over bar > (u) over bar, of the nucleon. A prediction for the corresponding polarized flavor-asymmetry is presented and shown to agree with predictions of (chiral quark-soliton) models which successfully reproduced the flavor-asymmetry of the unpolarized sea.