Inclusive studies of two- and three-nucleon short-range correlations in H and He
S. Li🇺🇸 · S. N. Santiesteban🇺🇸 · J. Arrington🇺🇸 · R. Cruz-Torres🇺🇸 · L. Kurbany🇺🇸 · D. Abrams🇺🇸 · S. Alsalmi🇺🇸 · D. Androic🇭🇷 · K. Aniol🇺🇸 · T. Averett🇺🇸 · C. Ayerbe Gayoso🇺🇸 · J. Bane🇺🇸 and 104 other authors
Inclusive electron scattering at carefully chosen kinematics can isolate scattering from the high-momentum nucleons in short-range correlations (SRCs). SRCs are produced by the hard, short-distance interactions of nucleons in the nucleus, and because the two-nucleon (2N) SRCs arise from the same N-N interaction in all nuclei, the cross section in the SRC-dominated regime is identical up to an overall scaling factor. This scaling behavior has been used to identify SRC dominance and to measure the contribution of SRCs in a wide range of nuclei. We examine this scaling behavior over a range of momentum transfers using new data on H, H, and He, and find an expanded scaling region compared to heavy nuclei. Motivated by this improved scaling, we examine the H and He data in kinematics where three-nucleon SRCs may play an important role. The data for the largest struck nucleon momenta are consistent with isolation of scattering from three-nucleon SRCs, and suggest that the very highest momentum nucleons in He have a nearly isospin-independent momentum configuration.