14 Search Results

Measurements of the EMC effect in the tritium and helium-3 mirror nuclei are reported. The data were obtained by the MARATHON Jefferson Lab experiment, which performed deep inelastic electron scattering from deuterium and the three-body nuclei, using a cryogenic gas target system and the high resolution spectrometers of the Hall A Facility of the Lab. The data cover the Bjorken 𝑥 range from 0.20 to 0.83, corresponding to a squared four-momentum transfer 𝑄² range from 2.7 to 11.9 (GeV/𝑐)², and to an invariant mass 𝑊 of the final hadronic state greater than 1.84 GeV/𝑐². The tritium EMC effect measurement ismore » the first of its kind. The MARATHON experimental results are compared to results from previous measurements by DESY-HERMES and JLab–Hall C experiments, as well as with few-body theoretical predictions.« less

Here, the purpose of this document is to outline the developing scientific case for pursuing an energy upgrade to 22 GeV of the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF, or JLab). This document was developed with input from a series of workshops held in the period between March 2022 and April 2023 that were organized by the JLab user community and staff with guidance from JLab management (see Sec. 10). The scientific case for the 22 GeV energy upgrade leverages existing or already planned Hall equipment and world-wide uniqueness of CEBAF high-luminositymore » operations.« less

The electromagnetic form factors of the proton and neutron encode information on the spatial structure of their charge and magnetization distributions. While measurements of the proton are relatively straightforward, the lack of a free neutron target makes measurements of the neutron’s electromagnetic structure more challenging and more sensitive to experimental or model-dependent uncertainties. Various experiments have attempted to extract the neutron form factors from scattering from the neutron in deuterium, with different techniques providing different, and sometimes large, systematic uncertainties. We present results from a novel measurement of the neutron magnetic form factor using quasielastic scattering from the mirror nucleimore » ${}^3\mathrm{H}$ and ${}^3\mathrm{He}$ , where the nuclear effects are larger than for deuterium but expected to largely cancel in the cross-section ratios. We extracted values of the neutron magnetic form factor for low-to-modest momentum transfer, $0.6<Q^2<2.9{\mathrm{GeV}}^2$ , where existing measurements give inconsistent results. The precision and $Q^2$ range of these data allow for a better understanding of the current world’s data and suggest a path toward further improvement of our overall understanding of the neutron’s magnetic form factor. Published by the American Physical Society 2024« less

When protons and neutrons (nucleons) are bound into atomic nuclei, they are close enough to feel significant attraction, or repulsion, from the strong, short-distance part of the nucleon-nucleon interaction. These strong interactions lead to hard collisions between nucleons, generating pairs of highly energetic nucleons referred to as short-range correlations (SRCs). SRCs are an important but relatively poorly understood part of nuclear structure, and mapping out the strength and the isospin structure (neutron-proton (np) versus proton-proton (pp) pairs) of these virtual excitations is thus critical input for modelling a range of nuclear, particle and astrophysics measurements. Two-nucleon knockout or 'triple coincidence'more » reactions have been used to measure the relative contribution of np-SRCs and pp-SRCs by knocking out a proton from the SRC and detecting its partner nucleon (proton or neutron). These measurements have shown that SRCs are almost exclusively np pairs, but they had limited statistics and required large model-dependent final-state interaction corrections. Here we report on measurements using inclusive scattering from the mirror nuclei hydrogen-3 and helium-3 to extract the np/pp ratio of SRCs in systems with a mass number of three. In this work we obtain a measure of the np/pp SRC ratio that is an order of magnitude more precise than previous experiments, and find a marked deviation from the near-total np dominance observed in heavy nuclei. This result implies an unexpected structure in the high-momentum wavefunction for hydrogen-3 and helium-3. Understanding these results will improve our understanding of the short-range part of the nucleon-nucleon interaction.« less

In the original PDF online version of this article, DOI: 10.1140/epja/s10050-020-00135-7, the references 22–26 were missing.

Measurements of elastic electron scattering data within the past decade have highlighted two-photon exchange contributions as a necessary ingredient in theoretical calculations to precisely evaluate hydrogen elastic scattering cross sections. This correction can modify the cross section at the few percent level. In contrast, dispersive effects can cause significantly larger changes from the Born approximation. The purpose of this experiment is to extract the carbon-12 elastic cross section around the first diffraction minimum, where the Born term contributions to the cross section are small to maximize the sensitivity to dispersive effects. The analysis uses the LEDEX data from the highmore » resolution Jefferson Lab Hall A spectrometers to extract the cross sections near the first diffraction minimum of ¹²C at beam energies of 362 MeV and 685 MeV. The results are in very good agreement with previous world data, although with less precision. The average deviation from a static nuclear charge distribution expected from linear and quadratic fits indicate a 30.6% contribution of dispersive effects to the cross section at 1 GeV. The magnitude of the dispersive effects near the first diffraction minimum of ¹²C has been confirmed to be large with a strong energy dependence and could account for a large fraction of the magnitude for the observed quenching of the longitudinal nuclear response. These effects could also be important for nuclei radii extracted from parity-violating asymmetries measured near a diffraction minimum.« less

Here, we report the first measurement of the (e, e' p) three-body breakup reaction cross sections in helium-3 (³He) and tritium (³H) at large momentum transfer ($$\langle{Q^2}\rangle$$ ≈ 1.9 (GeV/c)²) and x_B > 1 kinematics, where the cross section should be sensitive to quasielastic (QE) scattering from single nucleons. The data cover missing momenta 40 ≤ p_miss ≤ 500 MeV/c that, in the QE limit with no rescattering, equals the initial momentum of the probed nucleon. The measured cross sections are compared with state-of-the-art ab-initio calculations. Overall good agreement, within ±20%, is observed between data and calculations for the fullmore » p_miss range for ³H and for 100 ≤ p_miss ≤ 350 MeV/c for ³He. Including the effects of rescattering of the outgoing nucleon improves agreement with the data at p_miss > 250 MeV/c and suggests contributions from charge-exchange (SCX) rescattering. The isoscalar sum of ³He plus ³H, which is largely insensitive to SCX, is described by calculations to within the accuracy of the data over the entire pmiss range. This validates current models of the ground state of the three-nucleon system up to very high initial nucleon momenta of 500 MeV/c.« less

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.162501.