Protons are composed of valence quarks, sea quarks, and gluons
Modern particle physics and high-energy collider data confirm that protons are complex composite particles made up of valence quarks, sea quarks, and gluons.
The claim is a standard empirical fact of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) describing proton substructure. Multiple papers in the retrieved set analyze parton distribution functions (PDFs), explicitly detailing valence quarks, sea quarks, and gluons within the proton.
Ball RD, Bertone V, Carrazza S, Debbio LD, Forte S, Groth-Merrild P, Guffanti A, Hartland NP, Kassabov Z, Latorre JI, Nocera ER, Rojo J, Rottoli L, Slade E, Ubiali M. Parton distributions from high-precision collider data: NNPDF Collaboration.. 2017. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-017-5199-5
NNPDF3.1 discusses independent parton distributions for light-quarks, charm, and gluons, reflecting the internal partonic structure of the proton.
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Eskola KJ, Paakkinen P, Paukkunen H, Salgado CA. EPPS16: nuclear parton distributions with LHC data.. 2017. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-017-4725-9
EPPS16 analyzes nuclear parton distributions and discusses constraints on valence quarks and gluons.
K. A. Mamo, I. Zahed. Neutrino-nucleon DIS from holographic QCD: PDFs of sea and valence quarks, form factors, and structure functions of the proton. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.104.066010
Holographic QCD approaches extract non-perturbative parton distribution functions carried by sea and valence quarks in the proton.
Xiao Luan, Zhun Lu. Twist-3 generalized parton distributions of sea quarks at zero skewness in the light-cone quark model. 2025
Studies of twist-3 parton distributions investigate the sea quark contributions within the proton.
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