Short Range Correlations and the EMC Effect

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a linear relationship between the EMC effect and Short Range Correlations in nuclei, using electron scattering data to extract fundamental neutron structure information and suggesting a common origin in high-momentum nucleons.

Contribution

It establishes a quantitative link between the EMC effect and SRC scaling factors, providing a novel method to extract neutron structure functions from nuclear data.

Findings

EMC effect correlates linearly with SRC scaling factor

Allows extraction of neutron-to-proton structure function ratio

Suggests high-momentum nucleons dominate both phenomena

Abstract

This paper shows quantitatively that the magnitude of the EMC effect measured in electron deep inelastic scattering (DIS) at intermediate $x_B$, $0.35\le x_B\le 0.7$, is linearly related to the Short Range Correlation (SRC) scaling factor obtained from electron inclusive scattering at $x_B\ge 1.$. The observed phenomenological relationship is used to extract the ratio of the deuteron to the free $pn$ pair cross sections, the DIS cross section for a free neutron, and $F_2^n/F_2^p$, the ratio of the free neutron to free proton structure functions. We speculate that the observed correlation is because both the EMC effect and SRC are dominated by the high virtuality (high momentum) nucleons in the nucleus.