학술논문
Revealing the short-range structure of the 'mirror nuclei' $^3$H and $^3$He
Document Type
Working Paper
Author
Li, S.; Cruz-Torres, R.; Santiesteban, N.; Ye, Z. H.; 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, M. E.; Clarke, C.; Covrig, S.; Craycraft, K.; Day, D.; Dutta, D.; Fuchey, E.; Gal, C.; Garibaldi, F.; Gautam, T. N.; Gogami, T.; Gomez, J.; Guèye, P.; Habarakada, A.; Hague, T. J.; Hansen, J. O.; Hauenstein, F.; Henry, W.; Higinbotham, D. W.; Holt, R. J.; Hyde, C.; Itabashi, T.; Kaneta, M.; Karki, A.; Katramatou, A. T.; Keppel, C. E.; Khachatryan, M.; Khachatryan, V.; King, P. M.; Korover, I.; Kurbany, L.; Kutz, T.; Lashley-Colthirst, N.; Li, W. B.; Liu, H.; Liyanage, N.; Long, E.; Mammei, J.; Markowitz, P.; McClellan, R. E.; 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, R. D.; Reimer, P. E.; Reinhold, J.; Riordan, S.; Roche, J.; Rodriguez, V. M.; Schmidt, A.; Schmookler, B.; Segarra, E. P.; Shahinyan, A.; Slifer, K.; Solvignon, P.; Širca, S.; Su, T.; Suleiman, R.; Szumila-Vance, H.; Tang, L.; Tian, Y.; Tireman, W.; Tortorici, F.; Toyama, Y.; Uehara, K.; Urciuoli, G. M.; Votaw, D.; Williamson, J.; Wojtsekhowski, B.; Wood, S.; Zhang, J.; Zheng, X.
Source
Nature 609, 41-45 (2022)
Subject
Language
Abstract
When protons and neutrons (nucleons) are bound into atomic nuclei, they are close enough together 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 structure and mapping out the strength and isospin structure (neutron-proton vs proton-proton pairs) of these virtual excitations is thus critical input for modeling a range of nuclear, particle, and astrophysics measurements. Hitherto measurements used two-nucleon knockout or ``triple-coincidence'' reactions to measure the relative contribution of np- and pp-SRCs by knocking out a proton from the SRC and detecting its partner nucleon (proton or neutron). These measurementsshow that SRCs are almost exclusively np pairs, but had limited statistics and required large model-dependent final-state interaction (FSI) corrections. We report on the first measurement using inclusive scattering from the mirror nuclei $^3$H and $^3$He to extract the np/pp ratio of SRCs in the A=3 system. We obtain a measure of the np/pp SRC ratio that is an order of magnitude more precise than previous experiments, and find a dramatic deviation from the near-total np dominance observed in heavy nuclei. This result implies an unexpected structure in the high-momentum wavefunction for $^3$He and $^3$H. Understanding these results will improve our understanding of the short-range part of the N-N interaction.