The European Muon Collaboration effect from short-range correlated nucleons in a $x$-rescaling model

TL;DR

This study investigates whether short-range correlated nucleons alone can explain the nuclear EMC effect using an $x$-rescaling model, finding that additional factors like internal nucleon structure modifications are likely involved.

Contribution

The paper applies the $x$-rescaling model with SRC nucleons to analyze the EMC effect, highlighting limitations of SRC-only explanations and suggesting other mechanisms.

Findings

SRC nucleons' mass deficits alone cannot account for the EMC effect.

Modifications in the internal structure of mean-field nucleons are likely significant.

Universality of N-N SRC pairs may not hold across all nuclei.

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the hypothesis that the nuclear EMC effect comes merely from the N-N SRC pairs inside the nucleus and that the properties of N-N SRC pair are universal among the various nuclei, using the conventional $x$-rescaling model for the EMC effect. With the previously determined effective mass of the short-range correlated nucleon and the number of N-N SRC pairs estimated, we calculate the EMC effect of various nuclei within the $x$-rescaling approach. From our calculations, the nuclear EMC effect due to the mass deficits of the SRC nucleons is not enough to reproduce the observed EMC effect in experiments. We speculate that the internal structure of the mean-field single nucleon is also obviously modified, or there are more origins of the EMC effect beyond the N-N SRC configuration (such as the $\alpha$ cluster), or the universality of N-N SRC pair is violated noticeably from light to heavy nuclei.