Nuclear medium modification of nucleons via a Bethe ansatz model.

Abstract

The modification of the internal structure of nucleons inside the nucleus is investigated within the context of a constituent quark model, in which quarks interact forming bound clusters that act as nucleons. The elastic form factor, the momentum distribution, the correlation function, and the Coulomb sum rule are calculated. The contribution to these structure functions arising from nucleon degrees of freedom is identified by means of an impulse approximation, in which the quark structure of nucleons is assumed to be unaffected by other nucleons, and the dynamics of nucleons is given by an effective theory, extracted from our quark model. The effect of the modification of the nucleon is found to be noticeable on the elastic form factor at large momentum transfer, and on the Coulomb sum rule. A cluster approximation is also used to study the extent to which these effects are due to exchange of quarks.