Speaker
Description
The EMC effect, an observed difference in the partonic structure of bound versus free nucleons, remains unexplained forty years after its initial discovery. Naively, quark-gluon confinement and the scale separation between QCD dynamics (GeV) and internucleonic interactions (MeV) would imply that the two descriptions are largely independent of one another. Surprisingly, the EMC effect indicates instead that interactions between nucleons must influence the partonic dynamics within.
Inclusive DIS measurements have characterized the EMC effect for a wide range of nuclei but cannot directly identify the mechanism of nucleon modification as they lack information on the nucleus’ initial configuration. Tagged DIS (TDIS) measurements add this initial state information via detection of a spectator nucleon and provide a new avenue to connect the internal structure of the bound nucleon to its bulk motion and nuclear interactions.
In this talk, I will present TDIS results from the backward angle neutron detector (BAND). BAND detects high-momentum neutron spectators from DIS off of bound protons in deuterium. This allows us to study the bound proton’s internal structure as a function of its initial momentum, thereby providing further insight into the origin of the EMC effect and the fundamental structure of matter.
