Abstract
The EMC effect in deuterium and helium-3 is studied using a convolution formalism that allows isolating the impact of high-momentum nucleons in short-ranged correlated (SRC) pairs. We assume that the modification of the structure function of bound nucleons is given by a universal (i.e. nucleus independent) function of their virtuality, and find that the effect of such modifications is dominated by nucleons in SRC pairs. This SRC-dominance of nucleon modifications is observed despite the fact that the bulk of the nuclear inelastic scattering cross-section comes from interacting with low-momentum nucleons. These findings are found to be robust to model details including nucleon modification function parametrization, free nucleon structure function and treatment of nucleon motion effects. While existing data cannot discriminate between such model details, we present predictions for measured, but not yet published, tritium EMC effect and tagged nucleon structure functions in deuterium that are sensitive to the neutron structure functions and bound nucleon modification functions.
Highlights
Determining the underlying cause of the modification of the partonic structure of nucleons bound in atomic nuclei, known as the EMC effect [1,2,3,4,5,6,7], is an outstanding question in nuclear physics
We present an extensive study of nucleon modification effects in nuclei using a convolution formalism and measurements of the EMC effect in deuterium and 3He
We examine a range of off-shell modification functions, free-neutron structure function models, and different treatments of nucleon motion effects
Summary
Determining the underlying cause of the modification of the partonic structure of nucleons bound in atomic nuclei, known as the EMC effect [1,2,3,4,5,6,7], is an outstanding question in nuclear physics. Nucleons in SRC pairs have large spatial overlap between their quark distributions and are highly off-shell (E 2 = |p|2 + m2), which makes them prime candidates for structure modification Most recently, it has been demonstrated [7,21] that the EMC effect in nuclei from helium-3 (3He) to lead can be explained by a single effective universal modification function (UMF) of nucleons in SRC pairs. We predict new observables that can constrain these model inputs, including the tritium EMC effect, sensitive to F2n, and deuterium tagged nucleon structure functions, sensitive to bound nucleon modification functions. These predictions will soon be tested by data from the MARATHON [24], BAND [25], and LAD [26] Collaborations
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