Effects of nucleon-nucleon short-range correlations on inclusive electron scattering

TL;DR

This paper develops nuclear spectral functions incorporating nucleon-nucleon short-range correlations to improve the understanding of inclusive electron scattering, revealing the influence of NN-SRC on scattering peaks and proposing a new extraction method.

Contribution

It introduces a spectral function model based on relativistic mean-field theory that includes NN-SRC effects and enhances the accuracy of cross section calculations in electron scattering.

Findings

Cross sections are consistent with experimental data, especially in the Δ production region.

QE and Δ peaks are sensitive to NN-SRC contributions at specific Q^2 ranges.

A new method is proposed to extract NN-SRC strengths from experimental data.

Abstract

The nucleon-nucleon short-range correlation NN-SRC is one of the key issues of nuclear physics, which typically manifest themselves in high-momentum components of the nuclear momentum distributions. In this letter, the nuclear spectral functions based on the axially deformed relativistic mean-field model are developed to involve the NN-SRC. With the spectral functions, the inclusive electron scattering $ (e,e^{\prime}) $ cross sections are calculated within the PWIA framework, including the quasi-elastic (QE) part and $ \Delta $ production part. Especially in the $ \Delta $ production region, we reconsider the electromagnetic structures of the nucleon resonance $ \Delta $(1232) and the scattering mechanisms, thereby the theoretical calculations are improved effectively and the cross sections are well consistent with the experimental data. The theoretical $ (e,e^{\prime}) $ cross sections are further divided into NN-SRC and mean-field contributions. It is found that, at the kinematics $ 0.5 \,{\rm GeV}^{2}<Q^{2}<1 \,{\rm GeV}^{2} $, the QE peak and $ \Delta $ production peak not only reflect the mean-field structure, but also are sensitive to the NN-SRC information. Finally, we provide a new method to extract the strengths of NN-SRC from experimental cross sections for selected nuclei at the suitable kinematics.