Asymmetric quark/anti-quark hadronization in e+e− annihilation

We point out that the fragmentation of a strange quark into nucleons versus anti-nucleons is not necessarily identical Dps(z, Q2) ≠ Dps(z, Q2), even though the perturbative contributions from gluon splitting and evolution are p ↔ p symmetric. The observation of such asymmetries in the hadronization of strange and other heavy quarks can provide insight into the non-perturbative mechanisms underlying jet fragmentation in QCD.