Probing Nuclei with High-Energy Hadronic Probes at Inverse Kinematics

Abstract

Proton knockout reactions are a widely used tool to study nuclear ground-state distributions. While the interpretation of traditional experiments in direct kinematics has to account for initial and final state interactions, experiments in inverse kinematics can overcome such limitations. We discuss results of an experiment at the BM@N setup at JINR using a 12 C beam at 48 GeV/c to study quasi-elastic scattering reactions, single proton distributions, and short-range correlated nucleon-nucleon pairs. The inverse kinematics allows for the direct measurement of the nucleon-nucleon pair center-of-mass motion and provides first experimental evidence for scale separation of such pairs. Based on these results, we will in the future study neutron-rich nuclei in inverse kinematics in the context of short-range correlations and neutron stars.