The fundamental building blocks of the proton-quarks and gluons-have been known for decades. However, we still have an incomplete theoretical and experimental understanding of how these particles and their dynamics give rise to the quantum bound state of the proton and its physical properties, such as its spin¹. The two up quarks and the single down quark that comprise the proton in the simplest picture account only for a few per cent of the proton mass, the bulk of which is in the form of quark kinetic and potential energy and gluon energy from the strong force². An essential feature of this force, as described by quantum chromodynamics, is its ability to create matter-antimatter quark pairs inside the proton that exist only for a very short time. Their fleeting existence makes the antimatter quarks within protons difficult to study, but their existence is discernible in reactions in which a matter-antimatter quark pair annihilates. In this picture of quark-antiquark creation by the strong force, the probability distributions as a function of momentum for the presence of up and down antimatter quarks should be nearly identical, given that their masses are very similar and small compared to the mass of the proton³. Here we provide evidence from muon pair production measurements that these distributions are considerably different, with more abundant down antimatter quarks than up antimatter quarks over a wide range of momenta. These results are expected to revive interest in several proposed mechanisms for the origin of this antimatter asymmetry in the proton that had been disfavoured by previous results⁴, and point to future measurements that can distinguish between these mechanisms.

In Fig. 1c of this Article, the x-axis scale was inadvertently duplicated from Fig. 1b. The original Article has been corrected online.

Evidence for a flavor asymmetry between the ū and d¯ quark distributions in the proton has been found in deep-inelastic scattering and Drell-Yan experiments. The pronounced dependence of this flavor asymmetry on x (fraction of nucleon momentum carried by partons) observed in the Fermilab E866 Drell-Yan experiment suggested a drop of the d¯(x)/ū(x) ratio in the x>0.15 region. We report results from the SeaQuest Fermilab E906 experiment with improved statistical precision for d¯(x)/ū(x) in the large x region up to x=0.45 using the 120 GeV proton beam. Two different methods for extracting the Drell-Yan cross section ratios, σpd/2σpp, from the SeaQuest data give consistent results. The d¯(x)/ū(x) ratios and the d¯(x)-ū(x) differences are deduced from these cross section ratios for 0.13

The SeaQuest spectrometer at Fermilab was designed to detect oppositely-charged pairs of muons (dimuons) produced by interactions between a 120 GeV proton beam and liquid hydrogen, liquid deuterium and solid nuclear targets. The primary physics program uses the Drell–Yan process to probe antiquark distributions in the target nucleon. The spectrometer consists of a target system, two dipole magnets and four detector stations. The upstream magnet is a closed-aperture solid iron magnet which also serves as the beam dump, while the second magnet is an open aperture magnet. Each of the detector stations consists of scintillator hodoscopes and a high-resolution tracking device. The FPGA-based trigger compares the hodoscope signals to a set of pre-programmed roads to determine if the event contains oppositely-signed, high-mass muon pairs.

We report a measurement of the branching fraction for ψ(3770)→γχc1 and search for the transition ψ(3770)→γχc2 based on 2.92 fb-1 of e+e- data accumulated at s=3.773 GeV with the BESIII detector at the BEPCII collider. We measure B(ψ(3770)→γχc1)=(2.48±0.15±0.23)×10-3, which is the most precise measurement to date. The upper limit on the branching fraction of ψ(3770)→γχc2 at a 90% confidence level is B(ψ(3770)→γχc2)<0.64×10-3. The corresponding partial widths are Γ(ψ(3770)→γχc1)=(67.5±4.1±6.7) keV and Γ(ψ(3770)→γχc2)<17.4 keV.

The process e+e−→ pp̄π0has been studied by analyzing data collected at (formula presented) GeV, at (formula presented) GeV, and during a ψ(3770) line shape scan with the BESIII detector at the BEPCII collider. The Born cross section of p̄pπ0in the vicinity of the ψ(3770) is measured, and the Born cross section of ψ(3770) → p̄pπ0is extracted considering interference between resonant and continuum production amplitudes. Two solutions with the same probability and a significance of 1.5 σ are found. The solutions for the Born cross section of ψ(3770) → p̄pπ0are 33.8 ± 1.8 ± 2.1 pb and (formula presented) pb (< 0.22 pb at a 90% confidence level). Using the estimated cross section and a constant decay amplitude approximation, the cross section σ(p̄p → ψ(3770)π0) is calculated for the kinematic situation of the planned P̄ANDA experiment. The maximum cross section corresponding to the two solutions is expected to be less than 0.79 nb at 90% confidence level and 122 ± 10 nb at a center-of-mass energy of 5.26 GeV.

From December 2011 to May 2014, about 5 fb-1 of data were taken with the BESIII detector at center-of-mass energies between 3.810 GeV and 4.600 GeV to study the charmonium-like states and higher excited charmonium states. The time-integrated luminosity of the collected data sample is measured to a precision of 1% by analyzing events produced by the large-angle Bhabha scattering process.

We study the decays of the charmonium resonances J/ψ and ψ(3686) to the final states Ξ-Ξ+, Σ(1385) Σ(1385)± based on a single baryon tag method using data samples of (223.7±1.4)×106 J/ψ and (106.4±0.9)×106 ψ(3686) events collected with the BESIII detector at the BEPCII collider. The decay ψ(3686)→Σ(1385) Σ(1385)± is observed for the first time, and the measurements of the other processes, including the branching fractions and angular distributions, are in good agreement with, and much more precise than, the previously published results. Additionally, the ratios B(ψ(3686)→Ξ-Ξ+)B(J/ψ→Ξ-Ξ+), B(ψ(3686)→Σ(1385)-Σ(1385)+)B(J/ψ→Σ(1385)-Σ(1385)+) and B(ψ(3686)→Σ(1385)+Σ(1385)-)B(J/ψ→Σ(1385)+Σ(1385)-) are determined.

We study D0D̅0 pairs produced in e+e− collisions at √ s = 3.773 GeVusing a data sample of 2.92 fb−1 collected with the BESIII detector. We measuredthe asymmetry ACPKπ of the branching fractions of D → K−π+ in CP-odd and CP-even eigenstates to be (12.7 ± 1.3 ± 0.7) × 10−2. ACPKπ can be used to extract the strong phase difference δKπ between the doubly Cabibbo-suppressed process D̅0 → K−π+ and the Cabibbo-favored process D0 → K−π+. Using world-average values of external parameters, we obtain cos δKπ = 1.02 ±0.11 ±0.06 ±0.01. Here, the first and second uncertainties are statistical and systematic, respectively, while the third uncertainty arises from the external parameters. This is the most precise measurement of δKπ to date.

Based on (106.41±0.86)×106 ψ(3686) events collected with the BESIII detector at the BEPCII collider, the branching fractions of ψ(3686)→π+π-J/ψ, J/ψ→e+e-, and J/ψ→μ+μ- are measured. We obtain B[ψ(3686)→π+π-J/ψ]=(34.98±0.02±0.45)%, B[J/ψ→e+e-]=(5.983±0.007±0.037)%, and B[J/ψ→μ+μ-]=(5.973±0.007±0.038)%. The measurement of B[ψ(3686)→π+π-J/ψ] confirms the CLEO-c measurement, and is apparently larger than the others. The measured J/ψ leptonic decay branching fractions agree with previous experiments within one standard deviation. These results lead to B[J/ψ→l+l-]=(5.978±0.005±0.040)% by averaging over the e+e- and μ+μ- channels and a ratio of B[J/ψ→e+e-]/B[J/ψ→μ+μ-]=1.0017±0.0017±0.0033, which tests e-μ universality at the four tenths of a percent level. All the measurements presented in this paper are the most precise in the world to date.