The EMC Effect and High Momentum Nucleons in Nuclei

Recent developments in understanding the influence of the nucleus on deep-inelastic structure functions, the EMC effect, are reviewed. A new data base which expresses ratios of structure functions in terms of the Bjorken variable $x_A=AQ^2/(2M_A q_0)$ is presented. Information about two-nucleon short-range correlations from experiments is also discussed and the remarkable linear relation between short-range correlations and teh EMC effect is reviewed. A convolution model that relates the underlying source of the EMC effect to modification of either the mean-field nucleons or the short-range correlated nucleons is presented. It is shown that both approaches are equally successful in describing the current EMC data.Comment: 31 pages, 11 figure

Short-Distance Structure of Nuclei

One of Jefferson Lab's original missions was to further our understanding of the short-distance structure of nuclei. In particular, to understand what happens when two or more nucleons within a nucleus have strongly overlapping wave-functions; a phenomena commonly referred to as short-range correlations. Herein, we review the results of the (e,e'), (e,e'p) and (e,e'pN) reactions that have been used at Jefferson Lab to probe this short-distance structure as well as provide an outlook for future experiments.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, for publication in Journal of Physics

Polarized light ions and spectator nucleon tagging at EIC

An Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) with suitable forward detection capabilities would enable a unique experimental program of deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) from polarized light nuclei (deuterium 2H, helium 3He) with spectator nucleon tagging. Such measurements promise significant advances in several key areas of nuclear physics and QCD: (a) neutron spin structure, by using polarized deuterium and eliminating nuclear effects through on-shell extrapolation in the spectator proton momentum; (b) quark/gluon structure of the bound nucleon at x > 0.1 and the dynamical mechanisms acting on it, by measuring the spectator momentum dependence of nuclear structure functions; (c) coherent effects in QCD, by exploring shadowing in tagged DIS on deuterium at x << 0.1. The JLab MEIC design (CM energy sqrt{s} = 15-50 GeV/nucleon, luminosity ~ 10^{34} cm^{-2} s^{-1}) provides polarized deuterium beams and excellent coverage and resolution for forward spectator tagging. We summarize the physics topics, the detector and beam requirements for spectator tagging, and on-going R&D efforts.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures. Prepared for proceedings of DIS 2014, XXII. International Workshop on Deep-Inelastic Scattering and Related Subjects, University of Warsaw, Poland, April 28 - May 2, 201

Short Range Correlations and the EMC Effect

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.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, minor changes for PRL acceptance, reference 12 correcte

Neutron spin structure with polarized deuterons and spectator proton tagging at EIC

The neutron's deep-inelastic structure functions provide essential information for the flavor separation of the nucleon parton densities, the nucleon spin decomposition, and precision studies of QCD phenomena in the flavor-singlet and nonsinglet sectors. Traditional inclusive measurements on nuclear targets are limited by dilution from scattering on protons, Fermi motion and binding effects, final-state interactions, and nuclear shadowing at x << 0.1. An Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) would enable next-generation measurements of neutron structure with polarized deuteron beams and detection of forward-moving spectator protons over a wide range of recoil momenta (0 < p_R < several 100 MeV in the nucleus rest frame). The free neutron structure functions could be obtained by extrapolating the measured recoil momentum distributions to the on-shell point. The method eliminates nuclear modifications and can be applied to polarized scattering, as well as to semi-inclusive and exclusive final states. We review the prospects for neutron structure measurements with spectator tagging at EIC, the status of R&D efforts, and the accelerator and detector requirements.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures. To appear in proceedings of Tensor Polarized Solid Target Workshop, Jefferson Lab, March 10-12, 201