Valence quark distribution in A=3 nuclei -: art. no. 045208

We calculate the quark distribution function for He-3/H-3 in a relativistic quark model of nuclear structure which adequately reproduces the nucleon approximation, nuclear binding energies, and nuclear sizes for small nuclei. The results show a clear distortion from the quark distribution function for individual nucleons (EMC effect) arising dominantly from a combination of recoil and quark tunneling effects. Antisymmetrization (Pauli) effects are found to be small due to limited spatial overlaps. We compare our predictions with a published parametrization of the nuclear valence quark distributions and find significant agreement.