Investigation of the high momentum components of the nuclear wave function using hard quasielastic A (p,2p) X reactions

We present a theoretical analysis of the first data for a high-energy and momentum-transfer (hard) quasielastic A(p,2p)X reaction. The cross sections for this reaction are calculated within the light-cone impulse approximation based on a two-nucleon correlation model for the high-momentum component of the nuclear wave function. Nuclear effects due to modification of the bound nucleon structure as well as the soft nucleon-nucleon initial and final state interactions, with and without color coherence, have been studied in detail. The calculations show that the distribution of the bound proton light-cone momentum fraction (α) shifts towards small values (α< 1), an effect that was previously derived only within the plane wave impulse approximation. The shift is very sensitive to short-range correlations in nuclei. The calculations agree with data on the C(p,2p)X reaction obtained from the EVA/AGS experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The theoretical analysis of the data allows the contribution from short-range nucleon correlations to be singled out. The obtained strength of the correlations is in agreement with values previously obtained from electroproduction reactions on nuclei.