Short-Range Nucleon-Nucleon Correlations

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent experimental evidence for short-range nucleon-nucleon correlations and explores their potential role in the EMC effect, highlighting challenges in isolating these correlations.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of experimental findings on short-range correlations and discusses their possible connection to the EMC effect in deep inelastic scattering.

Findings

Experimental evidence supports the existence of short-range correlations.

Correlations may contribute to the EMC effect in certain kinematic regions.

Isolating correlations remains experimentally challenging.

Abstract

Valence-shell nucleon knock-out experiments, such as 12C(e,e'p)11B, measure less strength then is predicted by independent particle shell model calculations. The theoretical solution to this problem is to include the correlations between the nucleons in the nucleus in the calculations. Motivated by these results, many electron scattering experiments have tried to directly observe these correlations in order to gain new insight into the short-range part of the nucleon-nucleon potential. Unfortunately, many competing mechanisms can cause the same observable final-state as an initial-state correlation, making truly isolating the signal extremely challenging. This paper reviews the recent experimental evidence for short-range correlations, as well as explores the possibility that such correlations are responsible for the EMC effect in the 0.3 < xB < 0.7 deep inelastic scattering ratios.