Forward production of baryons in quark and gluon jets

Abstract

Inclusive production of protons in quark and gluon jets is calculated in perturbative QCD and the recombination model. We first calculate the inclusive distribution of a parton jet to decay into three quarks, and then recombine them to form a proton. The computation is performed in the framework of the same model that successfully describes the production of pions in parton jets. Our results, which are applicable to $x\gtrsim 0.5$, show a small production of baryons with $\frac{p}{\pi }\sim 1\%$. We point at other possible sources of baryons which must be operative if the abundant production of baryons shown in the low-$x$ data will persist at higher $x$ and high $q^2$.