A comparison of forward and backward pp pair knockout in 3He(e,e'pp)n

Abstract

Measuring nucleon-nucleon Short Range Correlations (SRC) has been a goal of the nuclear physics community for many years. They are an important part of the nuclear wavefunction, accounting for almost all of the high-momentum strength. They are closely related to the EMC effect. While their overall probability has been measured, measuring their momentum distributions is more difficult. In order to determine the best configuration for studying SRC momentum distributions, we measured the ${}^3$He$(e,e^{\prime }pp)n$ reaction, looking at events with high momentum protons ($p_p>0.35$ GeV/c) and a low momentum neutron ($p_n<0.2$ GeV/c). We examined two angular configurations: either both protons emitted forward or one proton emitted forward and one backward (with respect to the momentum transfer, $\vec{q}$). The measured relative momentum distribution of the events with one forward and one backward proton was much closer to the calculated initial-state $pp$ relative momentum distribution, indicating that this is the preferred configuration for measuring SRC.

8 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Phys Rev C. Version 2 incorporates minor corrections in response to referee comments

References in corpus (6)

• Probing Cold Dense Nuclear Matter
• Evidence for the Strong Dominance of Proton-Neutron Correlations in Nuclei
• Short Range Correlations and the EMC Effect
• New measurements of high-momentum nucleons and short-range structures in nuclei
• Tensor Correlations Measured in 3He(e,e'pp)n
• Short-range nucleon correlations and neutrino emission by neutron stars

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Measurement of double-polarization asymmetries in the quasi-elastic ${}^3\overrightarrow{\mathrm{He}}(\vec{\mathrm{e}},{\mathrm{e}}^{\prime }\mathrm{p})$ process