Hard probes of short-range nucleonnucleon correlations Article

Arrington, J, Higinbotham, DW, Rosner, G et al. (2012). Hard probes of short-range nucleonnucleon correlations . PROGRESS IN PARTICLE AND NUCLEAR PHYSICS, 67(4), 898-938. 10.1016/j.ppnp.2012.04.002

cited authors

  • Arrington, J; Higinbotham, DW; Rosner, G; Sargsian, M

authors

abstract

  • One of the primary goals of nuclear physics is providing a complete description of the structure of atomic nuclei. While mean-field calculations provide detailed information on the nuclear shell structure for a wide range of nuclei, they do not capture the complete structure of nuclei, in particular the impact of small, dense structures in nuclei. The strong, short-range component of the nucleonnucleon potential yields hard interactions between nucleons which are close together, generating a high-momentum tail to the nucleon momentum distribution, with momenta well in excess of the Fermi momentum. This high-momentum component of the nuclear wave-function is one of the most poorly understood parts of nuclear structure. Utilizing high-energy probes, we can isolate scattering from high-momentum nucleons, and use these measurements to examine the structure and impact of short-range nucleonnucleon correlations. Over the last decade we have moved from looking for evidence of such short-range structures to mapping out their strength in nuclei and examining their isospin structure. This has been made possible by high-luminosity and high-energy accelerators, coupled with an improved understanding of the reaction mechanism issues involved in studying these structures. We review the general issues related to short-range correlations, survey recent experiments aimed at probing these short-range structures, and lay out future possibilities to further these studies. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

publication date

  • October 1, 2012

published in

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

start page

  • 898

end page

  • 938

volume

  • 67

issue

  • 4