Narrow Results

Applying exact QCD sum rules for the baryon charge and energy–momentum conservation we demonstrate that if the only degrees of freedom in nuclei were nucleons, the structure function of a nucleus would be the additive sum of the nucleon distributions at the same Bjorken x = AQ²/2(p_A⋅q)≤0.5 up to very small Fermi motion corrections if 1/2m_N x is significantly less than the nucleus radius. Hence QCD implies that the proper quantity to reveal violation of the additivity due to presence of nonnucleonic degrees of freedom in nuclei is the ratio R_A(x, Q²) = (2/A)F_2A(x, Q²)/F_2D(x, Q²). Use of variable x_p = Q²/2q₀m_p in the experimental studies instead of x leads to the deviation of R_A(x_p, Q²) from one even if the nucleus would consist only of nucleons with small momenta. Implementation of QCD dynamics accounts in the case of the light nuclei for at least a half of the deviation of R_A(x_p, Q²) from one for x≤0.55. In the case of heavy nuclei account of the QCD dynamics and of light-cone momentum fraction carried by Fermi, Weizsacker, Williams equivalent photons are responsible for ≈ one half the deviation of R_A(x, Q²) from one at x≤0.55. We argue that direct observation of large and predominantly nucleonic short-range correlations (SRCs) in nuclei impacts strongly on the understanding of the EMC effect for x≥0.6 posing a serious challenge for most of the proposed models of the EMC effect. The data are consistent with a scenario in which the hadronic EMC effect reflects suppression of rare quark–gluon configurations in nucleons belonging to SRC appears to be the only viable. The dynamic realization of this scenario is presented in which quantum fluctuations of the nucleon wave function with x≥0.5 parton have a weaker interaction with nearby nucleons, leading to suppression of such configurations in bound nucleons and to the significant suppression of nucleon Fermi motion effects at x≥0.55 giving a right magnitude of the EMC effect. Implications of discussed effects for the analyses of the neutron structure function and nuclear parton distributions are presented. The directions for the future studies and challenging questions are outlined.

The quark exchange model and the full three-nucleon wave function in the configuration space are used to evaluate the role of Fermi motion on the structure functions (SFs) of helium-3 and tritium nuclei. The three-nucleon wave function is obtained from the solution of the Faddeev equations with the Malfliet–Tjon-type potential, by using the three-dimensional approach as a function of the magnitudes of the Jacobi momenta vectors and the angle between them. In this calculation, the initial valence quarks inputs are taken from the GRV's (Glück, Reya and Vogt) fitting procedure and the next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD calculation on , which give a very good fit to the available experimental data in the (x, Q²)-plane. The role of Fermi motion on the EMC ratio of the SFs of ³He and ³H nuclei are analyzed through the NLO expansion of the nuclear wave function in the coordinate space. A good agreement between the calculated EMC ratios, the corresponding experimental data and the theoretical results is found. Finally, the ratios of the SFs of the neutron to the proton (with the isospin symmetry assumption) with and without the Fermi motion effect, are also calculated, and they are compared with the available experimental data. Our results show that the roles of the Fermi motion in the framework of the quark exchange model for the calculations of the nuclear SFs are important.

The EMC effect is studied by using the DGLAP equation with the ZRS corrections and minimum number of free parameters, where the nuclear shadowing effect is a dynamical evolution result of the equation, the nucleon swelling and Fermi motion in the nuclear environment deform the input parton distributions. Parton distributions of both proton and nucleus are predicted in a unified framework. We show that the parton recombination as a higher twist correction plays an essential role in the evolution of parton distributions either of proton or nucleus. We find that the nuclear anti-shadowing contributes a part of enhancement of the ratio of the structure functions around x ~ 0.1, while the other part origins from the deformation of the nuclear valence quark distributions. In particular, the nuclear gluon distributions are dynamically predicted, which are important information for the recherche of the high energy nuclear physics.

The quark exchange formalism is formulated to calculate the quark momentum distribution in the iso-scalar Lithium nucleus. Then by boosting the nucleus to an infinite momentum frame, the Lithium structure function is evaluated at different nucleon "sizes", i.e., b = 0.7, 0.8, 0.9 and 1 fm and the Bjorken scale (x) values. It is shown that the Lithium structure function becomes narrower, and it is pushed to the smaller x values, as the nucleon size is increased. Similar to our previous works for three nucleon systems, the Lithium nucleus European muon collaboration (EMC) ratio decreases, as we increase the x and b values and it shows larger effect, with respect to the free nucleon and three nucleons iso-scalar nucleus. On the other hand, present calculation of the EMC ratio for Lithium nucleus shows a good agreement with the corresponding NMC data, which is available for 1.4 × 10^-4 ≤ x ≤ 0.65. Since the atomic number is still small (A = 6), in this work as usual, we ignore the possibility of simultaneous exchange of quarks between more than two nucleons, which can be important as one moves to the heavy nuclei. Although, according to Hen et al., in the neutron rich nuclei the protons have a greater probability than neutrons to have momentum greater than the Fermi momentum, the three-body contribution may be suppressed.

In the 35 years since the European Muon Collaboration announced the astonishing result that the valence structure of a nucleus was very different from that of a free nucleon, many explanations have been suggested. The first of the two most promising explanations is based upon the different effects of the strong Lorentz scalar and vector mean fields known to exist in a nucleus on the internal structure of the nucleon-like clusters which occupy shell model states. The second links the effect to the modification of the structure of nucleons involved in short-range correlations, which are far off their mass shell. We explore some of the methods which have been proposed to give complementary information on this puzzle, especially the spin-dependent EMC effect and the isovector EMC effect, both proposed by Cloët, Bentz and Thomas. It is shown that the predictions for the spin-dependent EMC effect, in particular, differ substantially within the mean-field and short-range correlation approaches. Hence, the measurement of the spin-dependent EMC effect at Jefferson Lab should give us a deeper understanding of the origin of the EMC effect and, indeed, of the structure of atomic nuclei.

The nuclear modifications of the parton densities in different regions of x (EMC effect, antishadowing, shadowing) reveal aspects of the fundamental QCD substructure of nucleon interactions in the nucleus. We study the feasibility of measuring nuclear gluon densities at large x using open heavy flavor production (charm, beauty) in DIS at EIC. This includes (a) charm production rates and kinematic dependences; (b) charm reconstruction at large x_B using exclusive and inclusive modes, enabled by particle identification and vertex detection; (c) impact of inclusive charm data on nuclear gluon density.

We consider deep inelastic scattering (DIS) on a dense nucleus described as an extremal RN-AdS black hole with holographic quantum fermions in the bulk. We find that the R-ratio (the ratio of the structure function of the black hole to proton) exhibit shadowing for x < 0.1, anti-shadowing for 0.1 < x < 0.3, EMC-like effect for 0.3 < x < 0.8 and Fermi motion for x > 0.8 in a qualitative agreement with the experimental observation of the ratio for DIS on nucleus for all range of x. We also take the dilute limit of the black hole and show that its R-ratio exhibits EMC-like effect for 0.2 < x < 0.8 and the Fermi motion for x > 0.8, and no shadowing is observed in the dilute limit for both bottom-up (using Thomas-Fermi approximation for the nucleon distribution inside the dilute nucleus), and top-down (considering the dilute nucleus to be a Fermi gas in AdS) approaches.