Mass of a short-range correlated nucleon *

Abstract

Abstract Nucleon properties and structure should be modified by short-range correlations (SRC) among nucleons. By analyzing SRC ratio data, we extract the mass of a nucleon in an SRC pair and the expected number of pn-SRC pairs in deuterium, under the assumption that the SRC nucleon mass is universal for different nuclei. The nucleon mass of a two-nucleon SRC pair is = 852 ± 18 MeV, and the number of pn-SRC pairs in deuterium is =0.021 ± 0.005. The mass deficit of the strongly overlapping nucleon can be explained by the trace anomaly contribution to the mass in QCD or alternatively by the vacuum energy in the MIT bag model.