학술논문
Revealing the short-range structure of the mirror nuclei 3H and 3He
Document Type
article
Author
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; Širca, S
Source
Nature. 609(7925)
Subject
Language
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.