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Momentum sharing in imbalanced Fermi systems
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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.
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Forward citations
Cited by 2 Pith papers
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Large amplification of the isospin-dependence of proton emitting source size in radioactive heavy-ion collisions: a signal of n-p correlation
Proton emitting source size is amplified by 24% in neutron-rich versus neutron-deficient tin collisions, revealing a beyond-mean-field short-range n-p correlation effect.
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Short-range correlations in nuclei
Short-range correlated pairs account for roughly 20% of nucleons in any nucleus and nearly all high-momentum nucleons, originating from the nucleon-nucleon tensor force.
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