Nucleon and hadron structure changes in the nuclear medium and impact on observables
Date
2007
Authors
Saito, K.
Tsushima, K.
Thomas, A.
Editors
Faessler, A.
Advisors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Type:
Journal article
Citation
Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics, 2007; 58(1):1-167
Statement of Responsibility
K. Saito, K. Tsushima and A.W. Thomas
Conference Name
Abstract
We review the effect of hadron structure changes in a nuclear medium using the quark-meson coupling (QMC) model, which is based on a mean field description of non-overlapping nucleon (or baryon) bags bound by the self-consistent exchange of scalar and vector mesons. This approach leads to simple scaling relations for the changes of hadron masses in a nuclear medium. It can also be extended to describe finite nuclei, as well as the properties of hypernuclei and meson-nucleus deeply bound states. It is of great interest that the model predicts a variation of the nucleon form factors in nuclear matter. We also study the empirically observed, Bloom-Gilman (quark-hadron) duality. Other applications of the model include subthreshold kaon production in heavy ion collisions, D and D-bar meson production in antiproton-nucleus collisions, and J/Psi suppression. In particular, the modification of the D and D-bar meson properties in nuclear medium can lead to a large J/Psi absorption cross section, which explains the observed J/Psi suppression in relativistic heavy ion collisions.