Short-range correlations and their implications for isospin-dependent modification of nuclear quark distributions

Abstract: The past decade has provided a much clearer picture of the structure of high-momentum components in nucleons, associated with hard, short-distance interactions between pairs of nucleons. Recent Jefferson Lab data on light nuclei suggest a connection between these so-called 'short-range correlations' and the modification of the quark structure of nucleons in the nuclear environment. In light of this discovery that the detailed nuclear structure is important in describing the nuclear quark distributions, we examine the potential impact of the isospin-dependent structure of nuclei to see at what level this might yield flavor-dependent effects in nuclear quark distributions.