Hidden-color configurations are a key prediction of QCD with important physical consequences. In this work we examine a QCD color-singlet configuration in nuclei formed by combining six scalar [ud] diquarks in a strongly bound SU(3)C channel. The resulting hexadiquark state is a charge-2, spin-0, baryon number-4, isospin-0, color-singlet state. It contributes to alpha clustering in light nuclei and to the additional binding energy not saturated by ordinary nuclear forces in He4 as well as the alpha-nuclei sequence of interest for nuclear astrophysics. We show that the strongly bound combination of six scalar isospin-0 [ud] diquarks within the nuclear wave function - relative to free nucleons - provides a natural explanation of the EMC effect measured by the CLAS collaboration's comparison of nuclear parton distribution function ratios for a large range of nuclei. These experiments confirmed that the EMC effect; i.e., the distortion of quark distributions within nuclei, is dominantly identified with the dynamics of neutron-proton (“isophobic”) short-range correlations within the nuclear wave function rather than proton-proton or neutron-neutron correlations.

The CLAS collaboration at Jefferson Laboratory has compared nuclear parton distributions for a range of nuclear targets and found that the EMC effect measured in deep inelastic lepton-nucleus scattering has a strongly “isophobic” nature. This surprising observation suggests short-range correlations between neighboring n and p nucleons in nuclear wavefunctions that are much stronger compared to p−p or n−n correlations. In this paper we propose a definitive experimental test of the nucleon-nucleon explanation of the isophobic nature of the EMC effect: the diffractive dissociation on a nuclear target A of high energy He4 nuclei to pairs of nucleons n and p with high relative transverse momentum, α+A→n+p+A′+X. The comparison of n−p events with p−p and n−n events directly tests the postulated breaking of isospin symmetry. The experiment also tests alternative QCD-level explanations for the isophobic EMC effect. In particular it will test a proposal for hidden-color degrees of freedom in nuclear wavefunctions based on isospin-zero [ud] diquarks.