The Strange Sea Density and Charm Production in Deep Inelastic Charged Current Processes

Charm production as related to the determination of the strange sea density in deep inelastic charged current processes is studied predominantly in the framework of the $\overline{{\rm{MS}}}$ fixed flavor factorization scheme. Perturbative stability within this formalism is demonstrated. The compatibility of recent next-to-leading order strange quark distributions with the available dimuon and $F^{\nu N}_2$ data is investigated. It is shown that final conclusions concerning these distributions afford further analyses of presently available and/or forthcoming neutrino data.