https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-025-01614-5
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
A sign of 3-body clustering in nuclei from an analysis of nuclear mass and short-range correlation probability
1
School of Nuclear Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, 730000, Lanzhou, China
2
Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 730000, Lanzhou, China
3
School of Nuclear Science and Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100049, Beijing, China
Received:
19
December
2024
Accepted:
3
June
2025
Published online:
23
June
2025
Three-nucleon short-range correlation (3N SRC) represents a rare and intriguing part of the nuclear dynamics at short distance, beyond the two-nucleon short-range correlation (2N SRC). To search its existence is a hot topic in the ongoing and future high-energy nuclear experiments and the developments of nuclear theory. In this study, we found a positive sign of 3N SRC in nuclei, by analyzing the correlation between the per-nucleon nuclear mass and the probability of a nucleon in 2N SRC state, with the current experimental measurements of 2H, 3He, 4He, 9Be, 12C, 27Al, 56Fe, Cu, 197Au and 208Pb from SLAC, CLAS, and JLab Hall C collaborations. The effective masses of the nucleons in 2N SRC and 3N SRC are also extracted from the analysis, which provide some references for the nuclear medium effect study. The probability of 3N SRC is much smaller than that of 2N SRC, thus requiring high-luminosity experiments to confirm its existence.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2025
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
