Probing the Repulsive Core of the Nucleon-Nucleon Interaction via the   4He(e,e'pN) Triple-Coincidence Reaction
  We studied simultaneously the 4He(e,e'p), 4He(e,e'pp), and 4He(e,e'pn) reactions at Q^2=2 [GeV/c]2 and x_B>1, for a (e,e'p) missing-momentum range of 400 to 830 MeV/c. The knocked-out proton was detected in coincidence with a proton or neutron recoiling almost back to back to the missing momentum, leaving the residual A=2 system at low excitation energy. These data were used to identify two-nucleon short-range correlated pairs and to deduce their isospin structure as a function of missing momentum in a region where the nucleon-nucleon force is expected to change from predominantly tensor to repulsive. Neutron-proton pairs dominate the high-momentum tail of the nucleon momentum distributions, but their abundance is reduced as the nucleon momentum increases beyond ~500 MeV/c. The extracted fraction of proton-proton pairs is small and almost independent of the missing momentum in the range we studied. Our data are compared with ab-initio calculations of two-nucleon momentum distributions in 4He. 
I. Korover N. Muangma, O. Hen, R. Shneor, V. Sulkosky, A. Kelleher, S.   Gilad, D.W. Higinbotham, E. Piasetzky J. Watson, S....
nucl-ex