Degree Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
1992
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
Physics and Astronomy
First Advisor
K. E. Lassila
Abstract
It has been observed that the momentum distributions of partons in bound nuclei are distorted relative to those of free protons and neutrons. This phenomenon was first observed in deep inelastic scattering experiments with muon and neutrino beams on nuclear targets and is known as the EMC effect. Similar phenomena have been observed in other high energy interactions such as the Drell-Yan process, the hadroproduction of direct photons, and the resonance production of charmonium and bottomonium states. In this work we investigate the possibility that these effects are predominantly of partonic origin. Standard nuclear quantum mechanics predicts that there is a non-zero probability for bound nucleons to overlap forming complex color singlets. We examine whether the observed EMC-type effects can be attributed to the difference between the parton momentum distributions in such clusters and those in single nucleons. We present a systematic way of determining these distributions in the Bjorken scaling limit and of estimating the average number of multiquark clusters in nuclei. The model predicts depletion of the valence quark and enhancement of the ocean quark and gluon components as the cluster baryon number increases. These properties can naturally explain significant features of the high energy behavior of nuclear targets.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.31274/rtd-180813-9446
Publisher
Digital Repository @ Iowa State University, http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/
Copyright Owner
Athanasios Petridis
Copyright Date
1992
Language
en
Proquest ID
AAI9223959
File Format
application/pdf
File Size
116 pages
Recommended Citation
Petridis, Athanasios, "Distortions of parton distributions due to multiquark effects " (1992). Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 9945.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/9945