Bridging the Gap: Connecting Atomic Nuclei to Their Quantum Foundations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new nuclear structure model that links traditional nuclear physics with quantum chromodynamics by analyzing high-energy scattering data to extract universal quark and gluon distributions within correlated nucleon pairs.

Contribution

It develops a factorized nuclear model that explicitly includes correlated nucleon pairs, bridging nuclear and particle physics descriptions in a novel way.

Findings

Universal quark and gluon distributions were successfully extracted.

The model provides a direct link between nucleon-level and parton-level descriptions.

High-energy scattering data supports the new nuclear structure paradigm.

Abstract

We extend the QCD Parton Model analysis by employing a factorized nuclear structure model that explicitly accounts for both individual nucleons and correlated nucleon pairs. This novel framework establishes a paradigm that directly links the nuclear physics description of matter (in terms of protons and neutrons) to the particle physics schema (in terms of quarks and gluons). 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. The successful extraction of these universal distributions marks a significant advance in our understanding of nuclear structure, as it directly connects nucleon-level and parton-level quantities.