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Title: Momentum sharing in imbalanced Fermi systems

Journal Article · · Science
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4]
  1. Tel Aviv Univ., Tel Aviv (Israel)
  2. Florida International Univ., Miami, FL (United States)
  3. Old Dominion Univ., Norfolk, VA (United States)
  4. Tel Aviv Univ., Tel Aviv (Israel), et. al.

The atomic nucleus is composed of two different kinds of fermions, protons and neutrons. If the protons and neutrons did not interact, the Pauli exclusion principle would force the majority fermions (usually neutrons) to have a higher average momentum. Our high-energy electron scattering measurements using 12C, 27Al, 56Fe and 208Pb targets show that, even in heavy neutron-rich nuclei, short-range interactions between the fermions form correlated high-momentum neutron-proton pairs. Thus, in neutron-rich nuclei, protons have a greater probability than neutrons to have momentum greater than the Fermi momentum. This finding has implications ranging from nuclear few body systems to neutron stars and may also be observable experimentally in two-spin state, ultra-cold atomic gas systems.

Research Organization:
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF), Newport News, VA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Nuclear Physics (NP)
Contributing Organization:
Jefferson Lab CLAS Collaboration
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-06OR23177
OSTI ID:
1168952
Report Number(s):
JLAB/PHY-14-1998; DOE/OR/23177-3288
Journal Information:
Science, Vol. 346, Issue 6209; ISSN 0036-8075
Publisher:
AAASCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 200 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (27)

Dynamical effects of spin-dependent interactions in low- and intermediate-energy heavy-ion reactions journal December 2015
Probing high-momentum protons and neutrons in neutron-rich nuclei journal August 2018
Modified structure of protons and neutrons in correlated pairs journal February 2019
Probing the core of the strong nuclear interaction journal February 2020
Neutrino–nucleus cross sections for oscillation experiments journal December 2017
Relativistic self-energy decomposition of nuclear symmetry energy and equation of state of neutron matter within QCD sum rules journal August 2019
Nucleon momentum distributions in asymmetric nuclear matter journal November 2019
Proton-proton momentum correlation function as a probe of the high momentum tail of the nucleon-momentum distribution journal January 2020
Critical density and impact of Δ ( 1232 ) resonance formation in neutron stars journal July 2015
Probing mixed-spin pairing in heavy nuclei journal January 2016
Emission of neutron-proton and proton-proton pairs in electron scattering induced by meson-exchange currents journal November 2016
Neutron matter within QCD sum rules journal May 2018
Spectral Response and Contact of the Unitary Fermi Gas journal May 2019
Towards understanding astrophysical effects of nuclear symmetry energy journal July 2019
Pairing in high-density neutron matter including short- and long-range correlations text January 2015
Measurement of the EMC Effect in the Deuteron text January 2015
Dynamical effects of spin-dependent interactions in low- and intermediate-energy heavy-ion reactions text January 2015
Final-state interactions in two-nucleon knockout reactions text January 2015
Nucleon-Nucleon Correlations, Short-lived Excitations, and the Quarks Within text January 2016
Single- and two-nucleon momentum distributions for local chiral interactions text January 2018
The center of mass motion of short-range correlated nucleon pairs studied via the A(e,e'pp) reaction text January 2018
Direct Observation of Proton-Neutron Short-Range Correlation Dominance in Heavy Nuclei text January 2018
Spectral response and contact of the unitary Fermi gas text January 2019
Relativistic self-energy decomposition of nuclear symmetry energy and equation of state of neutron matter within QCD sum rules text January 2019
Nucleon momentum distributions in asymmetric nuclear matter text January 2019
Probing the core of the strong nuclear interaction text January 2020
Pairing and short-range correlations in nuclear systems text January 2017

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