Dependence of nuclear binding on hadronic mass variation

We examine how the binding of light ($A\leq 8$) nuclei depends on possible variations of hadronic masses, including meson, nucleon, and nucleon-resonance masses. Small variations in hadronic masses may have occurred over time; the present results can help evaluate the consequences for big bang nucleosynthesis. Larger variations may be relevant to current attempts to extrapolate properties of nucleon-nucleon interactions from lattice QCD calculations. Results are presented as derivatives of the energy with respect to the different masses so they can be combined with different predictions of the hadronic mass-dependence on the underlying current-quark mass $m_q$. As an example, we employ a particular set of relations obtained from a study of hadron masses and sigma terms based on Dyson-Schwinger equations and a Poincar\'{e}-covariant Faddeev equation for confined quarks and diquarks. We find that nuclear binding decreases moderately rapidly as the quark mass increases, with the deuteron becoming unbound when the pion mass is increased by $\sim$60% (corresponding to an increase in $X_q=m_q/\Lambda_{QCD}$ of 2.5). In the other direction, the dineutron becomes bound if the pion mass is decreased by $\sim$15% (corresponding to a reduction of $X_q$ by $\sim$30%). If we interpret the disagreement between big bang nucleosynthesis calculations and measurements to be the result of variation in $X_q$, we obtain an estimate $\delta X_q/X_q=K \cdot (0.013 \pm 0.002)$ where $K \sim 1$ (the expected accuracy in $K$ is about a factor of 2). The result is dominated by $^7$Li data.Comment: 28 pages including 3 figures v2:additional citations/acknowledgments adde

Dependence of two-nucleon momentum densities on total pair momentum

Two-nucleon momentum distributions are calculated for the ground states of 3He and 4He as a function of the nucleons' relative and total momenta. We use variational Monte Carlo wave functions derived from a realistic Hamiltonian with two- and three-nucleon potentials. The momentum distribution of pp pairs is found to be much smaller than that of pn pairs for values of the relative momentum in the range (300--500) MeV/c and vanishing total momentum. However, as the total momentum increases to 400 MeV/c, the ratio of pp to pn pairs in this relative momentum range grows and approaches the limit 1/2 for 3He and 1/4 for 4He, corresponding to the ratio of pp to pn pairs in these nuclei. This behavior should be easily observable in two-nucleon knock-out processes, such as A(e,e'pN).Comment: 3 pages, 3 figure