The first paper from the recently completed family of tritium target experiments in JLab’s Hall A is now published in Physics Letters B. The final published version of the paper can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2019.134890
The INSPIRE-HEP database entry for the paper can be found at http://inspirehep.net/record/1720567
The paper reports the first measurement of the cross section ratios between Helium-3 and tritium for quasi-elastic (QE) proton knockout in electron scattering at large values of the missing momentum, in kinematics for which the contributions of non-QE reaction mechanisms are suppressed (large Q2, x > 1). The measured 3He/3H cross section ratios agree with state-of-the-art few-body nuclear theory calculations up to missing momenta of about 250 MeV/c, equivalent to the Fermi momentum, but exceed all available calculations by 20-50% for missing momenta above the Fermi momentum of these A = 3 mirror nuclei. The high-missing-momentum data are sensitive to the dynamics of short-range-correlated two-nucleon pairs that dominate the high-momentum tail of the nuclear wave-function.
Current and former group members including Prof. Puckett, Eric Fuchey, and Freddy Obrecht are co-authors on the publication, having contributed to the data taking for the tritium experiments in the form of shifts and/or run coordination.