Symmetry Breaking, Quark Deconfinement, and Deep-Inelastic Electron Scattering

It has recently been shown that deep-inelastic electron scattering from nuclei at large momentum transfer can be explained if quarks move in a larger effective volume in nuclei than in free nucleons. We argue that this "partial deconfinement" may be understood as arising from the modification of symmetry-breaking dynamics as one passes from vacuum to nuclear matter.