Flavor asymmetry of the nucleon sea and W-boson production

The advantage and feasibility of using W-boson production to extract unique information on the flavor asymmetry of the u-bar and d-bar sea-quark distributions in the proton are examined. The W+ and W- production cross section ratios in p+p collisions are shown to be sensitive to the d-bar /u-bar ratios, and they are free from charge-symmetry-breaking and nuclear-binding effects. The feasibility for measuring these ratios at the RHIC and LHC proton-proton colliders, as well as the expected sensitivity to the d-bar/u-bar ratios, are also presented.