Speaker
Description
Diquark bonds formed from valence quarks across a nucleon-nucleon pair have been proposed as the fundamental quantum chromodynamics (QCD) physics causing short-range correlations (SRC) in nuclei. The 12-quark "hexadiquark" QCD state - effectively two SRC bound together - is also proposed as the cause of distortions of quark distribution functions in nuclei. While SRC have been extensively studied both experimentally and theoretically, notably by the CLAS collaboration in conjunction with the EMC effect, their underlying cause at the QCD level has remained a mystery. The diquark formation model, if shown to be the source of SRC in nuclei, represents a breakdown of the assumption of scale separation in effective field theories and forms a bridge between QCD and nuclear physics. Implications of the hexadiquark state contained within the $^4$He nuclear wavefunction on the ATOMKI X17 signal will also be discussed.
