A new CLAS12 experiment to study exclusive Short Range Correlations in Nuclei

This talk will discuss a newly approved experiment to systematically study nucleon-nucleon (NN) pairs in short- ranged correlations (SRC) that will run using the CLAS12 spectrometer at Jefferson Lab. SRC NN pairs account for about 20% of all nucleons in medium to heavy nuclei and about 75% of the nuclear kinetic energy. There is evidence linking these pairs to nucleon structure modification in nuclei (the EMC effect).

By measuring high-statistics one-, two- and three-nucleon knockout reactions over a wide range of targets, this experiment will address some of the many open questions in SRC studies such as the existence and properties of Three-Nucleon SRCs (3N-SRCs), the nature of the NN interaction at short distances, how SRC pairs form, and the effect of SRC pairing on nucleon structure (the EMC effect).

Improved statistics in conjunction with the use of varying beam energies and the CLAS12 wide acceptance provide an increased kinematical coverage, allowing for a 3N-SRC search in exclusive reactions, detailed studies of momentum transfer and kinematical dependencies, as well as mass number (A) and nuclear symmetry (N = Z) dependencies of SRCs. This talk will present the physics goals of the experiment and provide an overview of the run plan.