Effects of Ground-State Correlations on High Energy Scattering off Nuclei: the Case of the Total Neutron-Nucleus Cross Section

With the aim at quantitatively investigating the longstanding problem concerning the effect of short range nucleon-nucleon correlations on scattering processes at high energies, the total neutron-nucleus cross section is calculated within a parameter-free approach which, for the first time, takes into account, simultaneously, central, spin, isospin and tensor nucleon-nucleon (NN) correlations, and Glauber elastic and Gribov inelastic shadowing corrections. Nuclei ranging from 4He to 208Pb and incident neutron momenta in the range 3 GeV/c - 300 GeV/c are considered; the commonly used approach which approximates the square of the nuclear wave function by a product of one-body densities is carefully analyzed, showing that NN correlations can play a non-negligible role in high energy scattering off nuclei.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

On the dependence of the wave function of a bound nucleon on its momentum and the EMC effect

It is widely discussed in the literature that the wave function of the nucleon bound in a nucleus is modified due to the interaction with the surrounding medium. We argue that the modification should strongly depend on the momentum of the nucleon. We study such an effect in the case of the point-like configuration component of the wave function of a nucleon bound in a nucleus A, considering the case of arbitrary final state of the spectator A-1 system. We show that for non relativistic values of the nucleon momentum, the momentum dependence of the nucleon deformation appears to follow from rather general considerations and discuss the implications of our theoretical observation for two different phenomena: i) the search for medium induced modifications of the nucleon radius of a bound nucleon through the measurement of the electromagnetic nucleon form factors via the A(e,e'p)X process, and ii) the A-dependence of the EMC effect; in this latter case we also present a new method of estimating the fraction of the nucleus light-cone momentum carried by the photons and find that in a heavy nuclei protons loose about 2% of their momentum.Comment: 38 pages, 1 figure; changed references and text in Section I (Introduction

Q**2-dependence of deep inelastic lepton scattering off nuclear targets

Deep inelastic scattering of leptons off nuclear targets is analized within the convolution model taking into account nucleon-nucleon correlations. We show that in the nuclear medium nucleons are distributed according to a function that exhibits a sizeable Q**2-dependence and reduces to the ordinary light-cone distribution in the Bjorken limit. At Q**2 1 this Q**2-dependence turns out to be stronger than the one associated with the nucleon structure function, predicted by pertubative quantum chromodynamics.Comment: 11 pages including figs. Figs. can be sent by PS-fil

Ground-state correlations and final state interactions in the process 3He(e,e'pp)n

The two-proton emission process $^3He(e,e'pp)n$ is theoretically investigated using realistic three-nucleon wave functions and taking the final state interaction into account by an approach which can be used when the value of the three-nucleon invariant mass is either below or above the pion emission threshold. Various kinematical conditions which enhance or minimize the effects of the final state interaction are thoroughly analyzed.Comment: 26 pages, 12 eps-figures. Introduction and abstract updated, few references added and Apendix A remove

Realistic Model of the Nucleon Spectral Function in Few- and Many- Nucleon Systems

By analysing the high momentum features of the nucleon momentum distribution in light and complex nuclei, it is argued that the basic two-nucleon configurations generating the structure of the nucleon Spectral Function at high values of the nucleon momentum and removal energy, can be properly described by a factorised ansatz for the nuclear wave function, which leads to a nucleon Spectral Function in the form of a convolution integral involving the momentum distributions describing the relative and center-of-mass motion of a correlated nucleon-nucleon pair embedded in the medium. The Spectral Functions of $^3He$ and infinite nuclear matter resulting from the convolution formula and from many-body calculations are compared, and a very good agreement in a wide range of values of nucleon momentum and removal energy is found. Applications of the model to the analysis of inclusive and exclusive processes are presented, illustrating those features of the cross section which are sensitive to that part of the Spectral Function which is governed by short-range and tensor nucleon-nucleon correlations.Comment: 40 pages Latex , 16 ps figures available from the above e-mail address or from [email protected]

GRS computation of deep inelastic electron scattering on 4He

We compute cross sections for inclusive scattering of high energy electrons on 4He, based on the two lowest orders of the Gersch-Rodriguez-Smith (GRS) series. The required one- and two-particle density matrices are obtained from non-relativistic 4He wave functions using realistic models for the nucleon-nucleon and three-nucleon interaction. Predictions for E=3.6 GeV agree well with the NE3 SLAC-Virginia data.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, submitted to PR

Number of Collisions in the Glauber Model and Beyond

The so called number of hadron-nucleus collisions n_coll(b) at impact parameter b, and its integral value N_coll, which are used to normalize the measured fractional cross section of a hard process, are calculated within the Glauber-Gribov theory including the effects of nucleon short-range correlations. The Gribov inelastic shadowing corrections are summed to all orders by employing the dipole representation. Numerical calculations are performed at the energies of the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We found that whereas the Gribov corrections generally increase the value of N_coll, the inclusion of nucleon correlations, acting in the opposite directions, decreases it by a comparable amount. The interplay of the two effects varies with the value of the impact parameter.Comment: Text expanded; typos corrected; results and conclusions unchanged. To appear in Phys. Rev.