Origin of the violation of the Gottfried sum rule

Using generalized Sullivan processes to generate sea-quark distributions of a nucleon at Q2=4 GeV2, we find that the recent finding by the New Muon Collaboration on the violation of the Gottfried sum rule can be understood quantitatively, including the shape of F2p(x)-F2n(x) as a function of x. The agreement may be seen as a clear evidence toward the validity of a recent suggestion of Hwang, Speth, and Brown that the sea distributions of a hadron, at low and moderate Q2 (at least up to a few GeV2), may be attributed primarily to generalized Sullivan processes