We report on the measurement of inclusive electron scattering off a carbon target performed with CLAS at Jefferson Laboratory. A combination of three different beam energies 1.161, 2.261 and 4.461 GeV allowed us to reach an invariant mass of the final-state hadronic system W~2.4 GeV with four-momentum transfers Q2 ranging from 0.2 to 5 GeV2. These data, together with previous measurements of the inclusive electron scattering off proton and deuteron, which cover a similar continuous two-dimensional region of Q2 and Bjorken variable x, permit the study of nuclear modifications of the nucleon structure. By using these, as well as other world data, we evaluated the F2 structure function and its moments. Using an OPE-based twist expansion, we studied the Q2-evolution of the moments, obtaining a separation of the leading-twist and the total higher-twist terms. The carbon-to-deuteron ratio of the leading-twist contributions to the F2 moments exhibits the well known EMC effect, compatible with that discovered previously in x-space. The total higher-twist term in the carbon nucleus appears, although with large systematic uncertainites, to be smaller with respect to the deuteron case for n<7, suggesting partial parton deconfinement in nuclear matter. We speculate that the spatial extension of the nucleon is changed when it is immersed in the nuclear medium.
We investigate the energy-momentum tensor form factors of the nucleon in nuclear medium, based on an in-medium modified $π$-$ρ$-$ω$ soliton model, with medium modifications of the mesons considered. The results allow us to establish general features of medium modifications of the structure of nucleons bound in a nuclear medium.
Within the impulse approximation, the modeling of the energy of final state leptons in electron and neutrino quasielastic and pion production processes on nuclear targets in the region of the $Δ$ resonance depends on several parameters. These parameters include the removal energy of the initial state nucleon from the nucleus $ε^{P,N}$, the potentials of electrons, nucleons and pions in the Coulomb field of the nucleus $|V_{eff}|$, and the kinetic energy dependent nuclear potential for final state nucleons ($U^{QE}_{opt}$) and "nucleon plus pion" final states in the region of the $Δ$ resonance …
We investigate how the gravitational form factors of the nucleon undergo changes in nuclear matter, emphasizing the Abel transformation from the three-dimensional (3D) Breit frame to the two-dimensional (2D) light-front frame. Since the gravitational form factors reveal the mechanical structure of the nucleon, we examine also the medium modifications of the energy-momentum, pressure, and shear-force distributions. We scrutinize the stabilities of the nucleon in nuclear matter. For this purpose, we employ the in-medium modified SU(2) Skyrme model to study these mechanical quantities of the nucl…
The influence of the underlying nucleon-nucleon collision geometry on evaluations of the nuclear overlap function ($T_{AB}$) and number of binary collisions ($N_{coll}$) is studied. A narrowing of the spatial distribution of the hard-partons with large light-cone fraction $x$ in nucleons leads to a downward correction for $N_{coll}$ and $T_{AB}$, which in turn, results in an upward correction for the nuclear modification factor $R_{AB}$. The size of this correction is estimated for several experimentally motivated nucleon-nucleon overlap functions for hard-partons. It is found to be significan…
We present recent studies on the effective mass of the nucleon in infinite and homogeneous nuclear matter and its relation to nuclear matter properties within the framework of the in-medium modified Skyrme model. Medium modifications are achieved by introducing optical potential for pion fields and parametrization of the Skyrme parameter in nuclear medium. The present approach is phenomenologically well justified by pion physics in nuclear matter and describe successfully bulk nuclear matter properties.
We investigated the transverse charge densities in the nucleon in nuclear matter within the framework of the in-medium modified Skyrme model. The medium modification of the nucleon electromagnetic form factors are first discussed. The results show that the form factors in nuclear matter fall off faster than those in free space, as the momentum transfer increases. As a result, the charge radii of the nucleon become larger, as the nuclear matter density increases. The transverse charge densities in the nucleon indicate that the size of the nucleon tends to bulge out in nuclear matter. This salie…
Impact of the in-medium modified nucleon weak and electromagnetic form factors on the neutrino mean free path in dense matter is studied by considering both the weak and electromagnetic interactions of neutrinos with the constituents of the matter. A relativistic mean field model and the quark-meson coupling model are respectively adopted for the in-medium effective nucleon mass and nucleon form factors. We find that the cross sections of neutrino scattering in cold nuclear medium decreases when the in-medium modification of the nucleon weak and electromagnetic form factors are taken into acco…
Based on the Isospin-dependent Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck (IBUU) transport model, the in-medium nucleon-nucleon inelastic scattering ( which is dominated by pion production at low and intermediate energies) is explored. It is found that the in-medium modification of nucleon-nucleon inelastic scatterings appears to reduce the neutron to proton ratio n/p at higher kinetic energies. Although the in-medium modification of nucleon-nucleon inelastic scatterings, as expected, affects the value of $π^-/π^+$ ratio, considering a series of undetermined properties of delta resonance and $π$ in medium, t…
Quantitative information on the tensor force induced isospin-dependence of short-range nucleon-nucleon correlation (SRC) extracted from recent J-Lab experiments was used in constraining the high-momentum tails of single nucleon momentum distributions in both symmetric nuclear matter (SNM) and pure neutron matter (PNM). Its effects on the Equations of State of SNM and PNM as well as the nuclear symmetry energy are investigated. It is found that the tensor force induced isospin-dependence of SRC softens significantly the nuclear symmetry energy especially at supra-saturation densities.
Mean free paths and in-medium scattering cross sections of energetic nucleons in neutron-rich nucleonic matter within the relativistic impulse approximation
We investigate the binding energy per nucleon and hadron properties in infinite and homogeneous nuclear matter within the framework of the in-medium modified Skyrme model. We first consider the medium modifications of the single hadron properties by introducing the optical potential for pion fields into the original Lagrangian of the Skyrme model. The parameters of the optical potential are well fitted to the low-energy phenomenology of pion-nucleus scattering. Furthermore, the Skyrme term is also modified in such a way that the model reproduces bulk properties of nuclear matter, in particular…
Using the Hugenholtz-Van Hove theorem, we derive general expressions for the quadratic and quartic symmetry energies in terms of single-nucleon potentials in isospin asymmetric nuclear matter. These analytical relations are useful for gaining deeper insights into the microscopic origins of the uncertainties in our knowledge on nuclear symmetry energies especially at supra-saturation densities. As examples, the formalism is applied to two model single-nucleon potentials that are widely used in transport model simulations of heavy-ion reactions.
Using the Hugenholtz-Van Hove theorem, we derive analytical expressions for the nuclear symmetry energy $E_{sym}(ρ)$ and its density slope $L(ρ)$ in terms of the Lorentz covariant nucleon self-energies in isospin asymmetric nuclear matter. These general expressions are useful for determining the density dependence of the symmetry energy and understanding the Lorentz structure and the microscopic origin of the nuclear symmetry energy in relativistic covariant formulism. As an example, we analyze the Lorentz covariant nucleon self-energy decomposition of $E_{sym}(ρ)$ and $L(ρ)$ and derive the co…
This paper deals with the possible motion of nucleons in the nucleus, which is due to realistic inter-nucleonic forces. This approach provides new or more substantiated conclusions about the nuclear structure than those based on the effective interaction of nucleons, while the shell model of the nucleus may lead to questionable conclusions regarding the nuclear structure and nuclear reaction mechanisms.
We study medium modifications of the nucleon-nucleon (NN) cross sections and their influence on the nucleon knockout reactions. Using the eikonal approximation, we compare the results obtained with free NN cross sections with those obtained with a purely geometrical treatment of Pauli-blocking and with NN obtained with more elaborated Dirac-Bruecker methods. The medium effects are parametrized in terms of the baryon density. We focus on symmetric nuclear matter, although the geometrical Pauli-blocking allows for the treatment of asymmetric nuclear matter. It is shown that medium effects can ch…
Three-body nuclear reactions in two-nucleon plus core systems are described in the framework of exact scattering equations including the core excitation. A nucleon-core optical potential is constructed that can be easily adjusted to the reference potential and thereby to the experimental two-body data, if available. This constitutes an important improvement over the simple deformation of the potential used previously that violated the original fit to the data. Predictions for elastic, inelastic, and transfer reactions involving $^{10}{Be}$ and $^{24}{Mg}$ nuclear cores are obtained. The new op…
In the past decades, it has been shown that the three-body force is necessary for a fully microscopic understanding of nuclear many-body systems, and thus efficient schemes for storing and utilizing three-body matrix elements have been developed. However, three-body matrix elements still demand a lot of memory and/or storage and it readily exceeds the limitation of the state-of-the-art supercomputers. We explore the possibility of mimicking the effects of three-body forces in medium-mass region, especially lower $pf$ shell, by density-dependent effective nucleon-nucleon interactions combining …
The eikonal direct-reaction model, as used in spectroscopic studies of intermediate-energy nucleon-removal reactions on light target nuclei, is considered in the case of a proton target and applied to neutron removal from $^{29}$Ne at 240 MeV/nucleon. The computed cross sections and their sensitivities are compared using an earlier detailed analysis of carbon target data. The nuclear structure input, for the $^{29}$Ne ground-state and $^{28}$Ne final states, is that deduced from the carbon target analysis. The comparisons quantify the sensitivity of the two reactions to the angular momenta and…
We calculate the properties of isospin-asymmetric nuclear matter based on chiral nucleon-nucleon (NN) and three-nucleon (3N) interactions. To this end, we develop an improved normal-ordering framework that allows to include general 3N interactions starting from a plane-wave partial-wave-decomposed form. We present results for the energy per particle for general isospin asymmetries based on a set of different Hamiltonians, study their saturation properties, the incompressibility, symmetry energy, and also provide an analytic parametrization for the energy per particle as a function of density a…
We renormalize the two-nucleon interaction at leading order (LO) in chiral perturbation theory using the scheme proposed by Nogga, Timmermans, and van Kolck--also known as modified Weinberg counting. With this interaction, we calculate the energy per nucleon of symmetric nuclear matter in the Brueckner pair approximation and obtain a converged, cutoff-independent result that shows saturation, but also substantial underbinding. We find that the renormalized LO interaction is characterized by an extraordinarily strong tensor force (from one-pion exchange), which is the major cause for the lack o…
Glauber models based on nucleon--nucleon interactions are commonly used to characterize the initial state in high-energy nuclear collisions, and the dependence of its properties on impact parameter or number of participating nucleons. In this paper, an extension to the Glauber model is presented, which accounts for an arbitrary number of effective sub-nucleon degrees of freedom, or active constituents, in the nucleons. Properties of the initial state, such as the number of constituent participants and collisions, as well as eccentricity and triangularity, are calculated and systematically comp…
Nuclear surface provides useful information on nuclear radius, nuclear structure as well as properties of nuclear matter. We discuss the relationship between the nuclear surface diffuseness and elastic scattering differential cross section at the first diffraction peak of high-energy nucleon-nucleus scattering as an efficient tool in order to extract the nuclear surface information from limited experimental data involving short-lived unstable nuclei. The high-energy reaction is described by a reliable microscopic reaction theory, the Glauber model. Extending the idea of the black sphere model,…
The number of nucleon (NN) scaling of the directed flow $v_1$ and elliptic flow ($v_{2}$) as well as the nuclear modification factor ($R_{cp}$) are tested for light nuclei which are produced in 0.4$A$ GeV $^{197}Au + ^{197}Au$ collisions at different impact parameters with two different in-medium nucleon-nucleon cross sections in the framework of an isospin-dependent quantum molecular dynamics (IQMD) model. In that energy domain, the emission of light nuclei can be well described by the squeeze-out phenonomenon. The results show a nice NN scaling behavior for flow parameters $v_{1}$, $v_{2}$ a…
The proton-proton momentum correlation function from different rapidity regions are systematically investigated for the Au + Au collisions at different impact parameters and different energies from 400$A$ MeV to 1500$A$ MeV in the framework of the isospin-dependent quantum molecular dynamics model complemented by the $Lednick\acute{y}$ and $Lyuboshitz$ analytical method. In particular, in-medium nucleon-nucleon cross section dependence of the correlation function is brought into focus, while the impact parameter and energy dependence of the momentum correlation function are also explored. The …
Based on the Hugenholtz-Van Hove theorem, it is shown that both the symmetry energy E$_{sym}(ρ)$ and its density slope $L(ρ)$ at normal density $ρ_0$ are completely determined by the global nucleon optical potentials that can be extracted directly from nucleon-nucleus scatterings, (p,n) charge exchange reactions and single-particle energy levels of bound states. Adopting a value of $m^*/m=0.7$ for the nucleon effective k-mass in symmetric nuclear matter at $ρ_0$ and averaging all phenomenological isovector nucleon potentials constrained by world data available in the literature since 1969, the…
