A detailed study of the nuclear dependence of the EMC effect and short-range correlations

Abstract

Background: The density of the nucleus has been important in explaining the nuclear dependence of the quark distributions, also known as the EMC effect, as well as the presence of highmomentum nucleons arising from short-range correlations (SRCs). Recent measurements of both of these effects on light nuclei have shown a clear deviation from simple density-dependent models. Purpose: A better understanding of the nuclear quark distributions and short-range correlations requires a careful examination of the experimental data on these effects to constrain models that attempt to describe these phenomena. Methods: We present a detailed analysis of the nuclear dependence of the EMC effect and the contribution of SRCs in nuclei, comparing to predictions and simple scaling models based on different pictures of the underlying physics. We also make a direct, quantitative comparison of the two effects to further examine the connection between these two observables related to nuclear structure. Results: We find that, with the inclusion of the new data on light nuclei, neither of these observables can be well explained by common assumptions for the nuclear dependence. The anomalous behavior of both effects in light nuclei is consistent with the idea the the EMC effect is driven by either the presence of high-density configurations in nuclei or the large virtuality of the highmomentum nucleons associated with these configurations. Conclusions: The unexpected nuclear dependence in the measurements of the EMC effect and SRC contributions appear to suggest that the local environment of the struck nucleon is the most relevant quantity for explaining these results. The common behavior suggests a connection between the two seemingly disparate phenomena, but the data do not yet allow for a clear preference between models which aim to explain this connection.

Final Version

References in corpus (17)

• Probing Cold Dense Nuclear Matter
• Evidence for the Strong Dominance of Proton-Neutron Correlations in Nuclei
• Tensor Forces and the Ground-State Structure of Nuclei
• Inclusive quasi-elastic electron-nucleus scattering
• Short Range Correlations and the EMC Effect
• New measurements of high-momentum nucleons and short-range structures in nuclei
• Hard probes of short-range nucleon-nucleon correlations
• Polarization Transfer in the 4He(e,e'p)3H Reaction at Q^2 = 0.8 and 1.3 (GeV/c)^2
• New data strengthen the connection between Short Range Correlations and the EMC effect
• On the dependence of the wave function of a bound nucleon on its momentum and the EMC effect
• Quantifying short-range correlations in nuclei
• How well do we know the neutron structure function?
• Neutron Structure Functions
• Coulomb distortion of relativistic electrons in the nuclear electrostatic field
• Counting the number of correlated pairs in a nucleus
• Constraints on the large-x d/u ratio from electron-nucleus scattering at x>1
• Clustering aspects in nuclear structure functions

Cited by in corpus (39)

• Electron-Ion Collider in China
• Nucleon-Nucleon Correlations, Short-lived Excitations, and the Quarks Within
• The Challenge of the EMC Effect: existing data and future directions
• Density and isospin asymmetry dependence of high-momentum components
• The EMC Effect and High Momentum Nucleons in Nuclei
• Progress in understanding short-range structure in nuclei: an experimental perspective
• New Results on Short-Range Correlations in Nuclei
• Measurement of muon plus proton final states in ${\nu }_{\mu }$ Interactions on Hydrocarbon at $⟨$$E_{\nu }$$⟩$ = 4.2 GeV
• Stylized features of single-nucleon momentum distributions
• Revealing the short-range structure of the "mirror nuclei" ${}^3$H and ${}^3$He
• Measurement of Partonic Nuclear Effects in Deep-Inelastic Neutrino Scattering using MINERvA
• Measurement of the EMC Effect in the Deuteron
• Direct Measurement of Nuclear Dependence of Charged Current Quasielastic-like Neutrino Interactions using MINERvA
• Global study of nuclear modifications on parton distribution functions
• Measurement of the EMC effect in light and heavy nuclei
• Exposing Novel Quark and Gluon Effects in Nuclei
• Factorization of exclusive electroinduced two-nucleon knockout
• Extracing the number of short-range corerlated nucleon pairs from inclusive electron scattering data
• Searching for flavor dependence in nuclear quark behavior
• Sub-threshold $J/\psi$ and ${\rm Y}$ Production in $\gamma A$ Collisions
• Isospin composition of the high-momentum fluctuations in nuclei from asymptotic momentum distributions
• Novel observation of isospin structure of short-range correlations in calcium isotopes
• Search for three-nucleon short-range correlations in light nuclei
• Nuclear medium effects in structure functions of nucleon at moderate $Q^2$
• Searching for three-nucleon short-range correlations
• Probing superfast quarks in nuclei through dijet production at the LHC
• Gluonic Probe for the Short Range Correlation in Nucleus
• Short-range correlations and their implications for isospin-dependent modification of nuclear quark distributions
• Nuclear force and the EMC effect
• A novel nuclear dependence of nucleon-nucleon short-range correlations
• Flavor-dependent EMC effect from a nucleon swelling model
• Nuclear and partonic dynamics in the EMC effect
• Nuclear effects in neutrino-nucleus DIS and probe for short range correlation
• Medium Effects in DIS from Polarized Nuclear Targets
• EMC effect, few-nucleon systems and Poincaré covariance
• Nuclear three-body short-range correlations in coordinate space
• Studying the Impact of Virtuality-Dependent Nucleon Structure Modification on Spectator-Tagged Deep Inelastic Scattering
• Hunting for an EMC-like effect for antiquarks
• Electromagnetic stress on nucleon structure