European Muon Collaboration effect from short-range correlated nucleons in a nucleon swelling model

The relation between the nuclear European Muon Collaboration (EMC) effect and the nucleon-nucleon short-range correlation is a hot topic in high-energy nuclear physics, ever since a peculiar linear correlation between these two phenomena was discovered. In this paper, the contribution to the nuclear EMC effect arising from the short-range correlated nucleons is examined in a nucleon-swelling model. We find that the structure modifications of the nucleon-nucleon short-range correlation (SRC) nucleons reproduce more or less the measured EMC ratios of light nuclei, while they are not enough to explain the measured EMC ratios of heavy nuclei. We speculate that the hypothesis of a causal connection between SRC and the EMC effect is not exact, or the universality of the inner structure of the SRC nucleon is violated noticeably from light to heavy nuclei, or there are other origins for the EMC effect.