The European Muon Collaboration effect from short-range correlated nucleons in a x-rescaling model*

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, we examine the hypothesis that the nuclear EMC effect arises merely from the N-N SRC pairs inside the nucleus and that the properties of the N-N SRC pair are universal among the various nuclei, using the conventional x-rescaling model for the EMC effect. With the previously determined effective mass of the short-range correlated nucleon and the number of N-N SRC pairs estimated, we calculated the EMC effect of various nuclei within the x-rescaling approach. According to our calculations, the nuclear EMC effect due to the mass deficits of the SRC nucleons is not sufficient to reproduce the observed EMC effect in experiments. We speculate that the internal structure of the mean-field single nucleon is also clearly modified. Alternatively, there can be more origins of the EMC effect beyond the N-N SRC configuration (such as the α cluster), or the universality of N-N SRC pair is significantly violated from light to heavy nuclei.