Quark-hadron duality and the nuclear EMC effect

Abstract

Recent data on polarized proton knockout reactions off 4He nuclei suggest a small but nonzero modification of proton electromagnetic form factors in medium. Using model-independent relations derived on the basis of quark-hadron duality, we relate the medium modification of the form factors to the modification at large x of the deep-inelastic structure function of a bound proton. This places strong constraints on models of the nuclear EMC effect which assume a large deformation of the intrinsic structure of the nucleon in medium.