# New perspectives on spectroscopic factor quenching from reactions

## TL;DR

This study reconciles discrepancies in spectroscopic factor quenching by analyzing transfer and knockout reactions with Bayesian uncertainty quantification, revealing a consistent, small asymmetry dependence of single-particle strengths in nuclei.

## Contribution

It provides the first consistent Bayesian analysis of transfer and knockout data, quantifying uncertainties and resolving a long-standing puzzle in nuclear spectroscopic strengths.

## Key findings

- Transfer and knockout spectroscopic strengths agree within uncertainties.
- Both probes indicate a small asymmetry dependence of single-particle strengths.
- Uncertainties are larger than previous estimates, setting a lower bound.

## Abstract

The evolution of single-particle strengths as the neutron-to-proton asymmetry changes informs us of the importance of short- and long-range correlations in nuclei and has therefore been extensively studied for the last two decades. Surprisingly, the strong asymmetry dependence of these strengths and their extreme values for highly-asymmetric nuclei inferred from knockout reaction measurements on a target nucleus are not consistent with what is extracted from electron-induced, transfer, and quasi-free reaction data, constituting a two-decade old puzzle. This work presents the first consistent analysis of one-nucleon transfer and one-nucleon knockout data, in which theoretical uncertainties associated with the nucleon-nucleus effective interactions considered in the reaction models are quantified using a Bayesian analysis. Our results demonstrate that, taking into account these uncertainties, the spectroscopic strengths of loosely-bound nucleons extracted from both probes agree with each other and, although there are still discrepancies for deeply-bound nucleons, the slope of the asymmetry dependence of the single-particle strengths inferred from transfer and knockout reactions are consistent within $1\sigma$. Both probes are consistent with a small asymmetry dependence of these strengths. The uncertainties obtained in this work represent a lower bound and are already significantly larger than the original estimates.