Measurement of the Contribution of Strange Quarks to the Proton Spin.

An analysis of HERMES data for charged-kaon production in deep inelastic scattering from a polarized deuteron target was performed to access the momentum and helicity distributions of strange quarks in the nucleon. This measurement involves the determination of the inclusive double-spin asymmetry and of the semi inclusive double-spin asymmetry for kaons. The shape of the momentum distribution for strange quarks is found to be softer than that of the average of the light sea anti-quarks. The strange helicity distribution is consistent with zero in the region 0.02<x<0.3 and Q²>1 GeV². Details of the analysis will be presented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]