On the dependence of the wave function of a bound nucleon on its momentum and the EMC effect

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the wave function of a bound nucleon depends on its momentum and explores the implications for the EMC effect and nucleon structure modifications within nuclei.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical analysis showing the strong momentum dependence of nucleon wave function modifications in nuclei, with implications for experimental measurements and the EMC effect.

Findings

Nucleon deformation depends on momentum, especially at non-relativistic values.

Proposes a new method to estimate photon momentum contribution in nuclei.

Protons in heavy nuclei lose about 2% of their momentum due to photon effects.

Abstract

It is widely discussed in the literature that the wave function of the nucleon bound in a nucleus is modified due to the interaction with the surrounding medium. We argue that the modification should strongly depend on the momentum of the nucleon. We study such an effect in the case of the point-like configuration component of the wave function of a nucleon bound in a nucleus A, considering the case of arbitrary final state of the spectator A-1 system. We show that for non relativistic values of the nucleon momentum, the momentum dependence of the nucleon deformation appears to follow from rather general considerations and discuss the implications of our theoretical observation for two different phenomena: i) the search for medium induced modifications of the nucleon radius of a bound nucleon through the measurement of the electromagnetic nucleon form factors via the A(e,e'p)X process, and ii) the A-dependence of the EMC effect; in this latter case we also present a new method of estimating the fraction of the nucleus light-cone momentum carried by the photons and find that in a heavy nuclei protons loose about 2% of their momentum.