Hard probes of short-range nucleon-nucleon correlations

TL;DR

This paper reviews how high-energy nuclear probes reveal short-range nucleon-nucleon correlations, advancing understanding of dense nuclear structures beyond mean-field models.

Contribution

It surveys recent experimental progress and discusses future directions in studying short-range correlations in nuclei using high-energy probes.

Findings

Mapped out the strength of short-range correlations in various nuclei

Identified the isospin structure of nucleon pairs involved in correlations

Reviewed experimental techniques and reaction mechanisms

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 nucleon-nucleon 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 nucleon-nucleon 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.