Revealing the short-range structure of the mirror nuclei 3H and 3He.

Academic Article

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.
  • Authors

  • 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, Elena
  • 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, Karl
  • Solvignon, P
  • Širca, S
  • Su, T
  • Suleiman, R
  • Szumila-Vance, H
  • Tang, L
  • Tian, Y
  • Tireman, W
  • Tortorici, F
  • Toyama, Y
  • Uehara, K
  • Urciuoli, GM
  • Votaw, D
  • Williamson, J
  • Wojtsekhowski, B
  • Wood, S
  • Zhang, J
  • Zheng, X
  • Status

    Publication Date

  • September 2022
  • Published In

  • Nature  Journal
  • Keywords

  • hep-ex
  • nucl-ex
  • nucl-th
  • Digital Object Identifier (doi)

    Pubmed Id

  • 36045235
  • Start Page

  • 41
  • End Page

  • 45
  • Volume

  • 609
  • Issue

  • 7925