Universality of nucleon-nucleon short-range correlations: the factorization property of the nuclear wave function, the relative and center-of-mass momentum distributions, and the nuclear contacts

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that nucleon-nucleon short-range correlations exhibit a universal factorization property across nuclei, with implications for understanding nuclear structure and correlations at high momenta, supported by theoretical calculations and experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a parameter-free model showing the universal factorization of high-momentum nucleon pairs and provides model-independent nuclear contact values from momentum distributions.

Findings

Proton-neutron momentum distributions factorize at high relative momenta for all nuclei.

Nuclear contacts C_A^{pn} are obtained in a model-independent way.

High pair c.m. momentum reduces proton-neutron dominance over proton-proton pairs.

Abstract

The two-nucleon momentum distributions have been calculated for nuclei up to A=40 and various values of the relative and center-of-mass momenta and angle between them. For complex nuclei a parameter-free linked-cluster expansion, based upon a realistic local two-nucleon interaction of the Argonne family and variational wave function featuring central, tensor, spin and iso-spin correlations, has been used. The obtained results show that: 1) independently of the mass number A, at values of the relative momentum k_rel> 2 fm^{-1} the proton-neutron momentum distributions for back-to-back (BB) nucleons (K_cm=0) exhibit the factorization property n_A^{pn}(k_rel,K_cm=0)=C_A^{pn} n_D(k_rel) n_{cm}^{pn}(K_cm=0), where n_D is the deuteron momentum distribution, n_{cm}^{pn}(K_{cm}=0) the momentum distribution of the c.m. motion of the pair and C_A^{pn} the nuclear contact measuring the number of BB pn pairs with deuteron-like momenta; 2) the values of the proton-neutron nuclear contact C_A^{pn} are obtained in a model-independent way from the ratio n_A^{pn}(k_rel,K_cm=0)/n_D(k_rel) n_{cm}^{pn}(K_cm=0); 3) also the K_cm-integrated pn momentum distributions divided by the deuteron momentum distribution exhibits a constant behavior equal to C_A^{pn}, but only at very high values of k_{rel}> 3.5fm^{-1}, where the relative momentum distribution is entirely governed by BB short-range correlated nucleons; 4) the absolute value of the number of pn and pp short-range correlated pairs is calculated, illustrating that the high values (K_cm>1 fm^{-1}) of the pair c.m. momentum appreciably reduce the dominance of the pn over pp pairs produced by the tensor force when K_cm=0; 5) calculations are in good agreement with the VMC calculations for light nuclei and with available experimental on the processes A(e,e'pn)X and A(e,e'pp)X.