Partial deconfinement of quarks in nuclei and the EMC effect

Abstract

We investigate the possibility that in a heavy nucleus a few nucleons exist in a state of total deconfinement. The constituents of these deconfined nucleons are regarded as a mixture of quark-and gluon-gases in thermal equilibrium at a fixed temperatureT. This approach reproduces the observed softening of the valence quarks in heavy nuclei and predicts fewer gluons at x<1 and an exponential decrease of the structure functions at x>1.