Modified structure of protons and neutrons in correlated pairs

Schmookler, B.; Duer, M.; Schmidt, A.; Hen, O.; Gilad, S.; Piasetzky, E.; Strikman, M.; Weinstein, L. B.; Adhikari, S.; Amaryan, M.; Hafidi, K.; Johnston, S.; Joosten, S.; Mustapha, B.

doi:10.1038/s41586-019-0925-9

Title: Modified structure of protons and neutrons in correlated pairs

Journal Article · 20 February 2019 · Nature (London)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-0925-9 · OSTI ID:1497624

Schmookler, B.; Duer, M.; Schmidt, A.; Hen, O.; Gilad, S.; Piasetzky, E.; Strikman, M.; Weinstein, L. B.; Adhikari, S.; Amaryan, M.; Hafidi, K.; Johnston, S.; Joosten, S.; Mustapha, B.

The atomic nucleus is made of protons and neutrons (nucleons), which are themselves composed of quarks and gluons. Understanding how the quark-gluon structure of a nucleon bound in an atomic nucleus is modified by the surrounding nucleons is an outstanding challenge. Although evidence for such modification-known as the EMC effect-was first observed over 35 years ago, there is still no generally accepted explanation for its cause. Recent observations suggest that the EMC effect is related to close-proximity short-range correlated (SRC) nucleon pairs in nuclei. Here we report simultaneous, high-precision measurements of the EMC effect and SRC abundances. We show that EMC data can be explained by a universal modification of the structure of nucleons in neutron-proton SRC pairs and present a data-driven extraction of the corresponding universal modification function. This implies that in heavier nuclei with many more neutrons than protons, each proton is more likely than each neutron to belong to an SRC pair and hence to have distorted quark structure. This universal modification function will be useful for determining the structure of the free neutron and thereby testing quantum chromodynamics symmetry-breaking mechanisms and may help to discriminate between nuclear physics effects and beyond-the-standard-model effects in neutrino experiments.

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Research Organization:: Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States); Mississippi State Univ., Mississippi State, MS (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Chilean Comision Nacional de Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnologica (CONICYT); Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique (CEA); Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN); Israel Science Foundation (ISF); National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea; National Science Foundation (NSF); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Nuclear Physics (NP) (SC-26); United Kingdom Science and Technology Facilities Council

Contributing Organization:: The CLAS Collaboration

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-06CH11357; FG02-07ER41528

OSTI ID:: 1497624

Journal Information:: Nature (London), Journal Name: Nature (London) Journal Issue: 7744 Vol. 566; ISSN 0028-0836

Publisher:: Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Relativistic self-energy decomposition of nuclear symmetry energy and equation of state of neutron matter within QCD sum rules Cai, Bao-Jun; Chen, Lie-Wen Physical Review C, Vol. 100, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevc.100.024303	journal	August 2019
Isospin composition of the high-momentum fluctuations in nuclei from asymptotic momentum distributions Ryckebusch, Jan; Cosyn, Wim; Vieijra, Tom Physical Review C, Vol. 100, Issue 5 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevc.100.054620	journal	November 2019
Role of higher twist effects in diffractive DIS and determination of diffractive parton distribution functions Maktoubian, Atefeh; Mehraban, Hossein; Khanpour, Hamzeh Physical Review D, Vol. 100, Issue 5 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.100.054020	journal	September 2019
Direct Observation of Proton-Neutron Short-Range Correlation Dominance in Heavy Nuclei Duer, M.; Schmidt, A.; Pybus, J. R. Physical Review Letters, Vol. 122, Issue 17 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.122.172502	journal	May 2019
Direct Observation of Proton-Neutron Short-Range Correlation Dominance in Heavy Nuclei Duer, M.; Schmidt, A.; Pybus, J. R. arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1810.05343	text	January 2018
Relativistic self-energy decomposition of nuclear symmetry energy and equation of state of neutron matter within QCD sum rules Cai, Bao-Jun; Chen, Lie-Wen arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1903.10430	text	January 2019
Role of higher twist effects in diffractive DIS and determination of diffractive parton distribution functions Maktoubian, Atefeh; Mehraban, Hossein; Khanpour, Hamzeh arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1908.10154	text	January 2019
Probing the core of the strong nuclear interaction Schmidt, A.; Pybus, J. R.; Weiss, R. arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2004.11221	text	January 2020

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