Nuclear Physics Seminar

Results from recent experiments show that short-range interactions between the fermions form correlated, high-momentum, neutron-proton pairs. These pairs account for 20% - 25% of the nucleons in medium and heavy nuclei and dominate the momentum distribution of nucleons above the Fermi momentum of the nucleus. The observed dominance of these Short-Range Correlated (SRC) pairs by neutron-proton pairs shows the dominance of the tensor part of the nucleon-nucleon interaction at short distances. Recent works have shown that the existence and nature of SRC pairs has wide ranging implications for atomic, nuclear and astro physics, including neutrino-nucleus scattering, the EMC effect, the NuTeV anomaly, the nuclear symmetry energy. In this talk I will present the use of hard exclusive reactions for the study of SRCs, and discuss several open questions for next-generation experiment to address. I will present an experimental program based on proton, electron, and neutrino beams that can run at Dubna, GSI, JLab, Fermilab and perhaps even at BNL. I will also discuss the possibility of studying SRC pairs and their partonic structure at an EIC, using the method of spectator tagging in Quasi-elastic and Deep-Inelastic kinematics.