1. Revealing the short-range structure of the mirror nuclei 3H and 3He
- Author
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Li, S, Cruz-Torres, R, Santiesteban, N, Ye, ZH, Abrams, D, Alsalmi, S, Androic, D, Aniol, K, Arrington, J, Averett, T, Gayoso, C Ayerbe, Bane, J, Barcus, S, Barrow, J, Beck, A, Bellini, V, Bhatt, H, Bhetuwal, D, Biswas, D, Bulumulla, D, Camsonne, A, Castellanos, J, Chen, J, Chen, J-P, Chrisman, D, Christy, ME, Clarke, C, Covrig, S, Craycraft, K, Day, D, Dutta, D, Fuchey, E, Gal, C, Garibaldi, F, Gautam, TN, Gogami, T, Gomez, J, Guèye, P, Habarakada, A, Hague, TJ, Hansen, JO, Hauenstein, F, Henry, W, Higinbotham, DW, Holt, RJ, Hyde, C, Itabashi, T, Kaneta, M, Karki, A, Katramatou, AT, Keppel, CE, Khachatryan, M, Khachatryan, V, King, PM, Korover, I, Kurbany, L, Kutz, T, Lashley-Colthirst, N, Li, WB, Liu, H, Liyanage, N, Long, E, Mammei, J, Markowitz, P, McClellan, RE, Meddi, F, Meekins, D, Beck, S Mey-Tal, Michaels, R, Mihovilovič, M, Moyer, A, Nagao, S, Nelyubin, V, Nguyen, D, Nycz, M, Olson, M, Ou, L, Owen, V, Palatchi, C, Pandey, B, Papadopoulou, A, Park, S, Paul, S, Petkovic, T, Pomatsalyuk, R, Premathilake, S, Punjabi, V, Ransome, RD, Reimer, PE, Reinhold, J, Riordan, S, Roche, J, Rodriguez, VM, Schmidt, A, Schmookler, B, Segarra, EP, Shahinyan, A, Slifer, K, Solvignon, P, and Širca, S
- Subjects
Nuclear and Plasma Physics ,Synchrotrons and Accelerators ,Physical Sciences ,General Science & Technology - Abstract
When protons and neutrons (nucleons) are bound into atomic nuclei, they are close enough to feel significant attraction, or repulsion, from the strong, short-distance part of the nucleon-nucleon interaction. These strong interactions lead to hard collisions between nucleons, generating pairs of highly energetic nucleons referred to as short-range correlations (SRCs). SRCs are an important but relatively poorly understood part of nuclear structure1-3, and mapping out the strength and the isospin structure (neutron-proton (np) versus proton-proton (pp) pairs) of these virtual excitations is thus critical input for modelling a range of nuclear, particle and astrophysics measurements3-5. Two-nucleon knockout or 'triple coincidence' reactions have been used to measure the relative contribution of np-SRCs and pp-SRCs by knocking out a proton from the SRC and detecting its partner nucleon (proton or neutron). These measurements6-8 have shown that SRCs are almost exclusively np pairs, but they had limited statistics and required large model-dependent final-state interaction corrections. Here we report on measurements using inclusive scattering from the mirror nuclei hydrogen-3 and helium-3 to extract the np/pp ratio of SRCs in systems with a mass number of three. We obtain a measure of the np/pp SRC ratio that is an order of magnitude more precise than previous experiments, and find a marked deviation from the near-total np dominance observed in heavy nuclei. This result implies an unexpected structure in the high-momentum wavefunction for hydrogen-3 and helium-3. Understanding these results will improve our understanding of the short-range part of the nucleon-nucleon interaction.
- Published
- 2022