Modification of Quark-Gluon Distributions in Nuclei by Correlated Nucleon Pairs

TL;DR

This paper extends the QCD Parton Model to include correlated nucleon pairs, analyzing high-energy scattering data to extract universal quark and gluon distributions within these pairs, advancing nuclear structure understanding.

Contribution

It introduces a factorized nuclear structure model incorporating correlated nucleon pairs and successfully extracts their universal parton distributions from experimental data.

Findings

Universal quark and gluon distributions in correlated pairs identified

Nucleus-specific fractions of correlated pairs determined

Enhanced understanding of nuclear structure at parton level

Abstract

We extend the QCD Parton Model analysis using a factorized nuclear structure model incorporating individual nucleons and pairs of correlated nucleons. Our analysis of high-energy data from lepton Deep-Inelastic Scattering, Drell-Yan and W/Z production simultaneously extracts the universal effective distribution of quarks and gluons inside correlated nucleon pairs, and their nucleus-specific fractions. Such successful extraction of these universal distributions marks a significant advance in our understanding of nuclear structure properties connecting nucleon- and parton-level quantities.