We provide a systematic study of the isospin composition and neutron-to-proton N Z ratio dependence of nuclear short-range correlations (SRC) across the nuclear mass table. We use the low-order correlation operator approximation (LCA) to compute the SRC contribution to the single-nucleon momentum distributions for 14 different nuclei from A = 4 to A = 208. Ten asymmetric nuclei are included for which the neutrons outnumber the protons by a factor of up to 1.54. The computed momentum distributions are used to extract the pair composition of the SRC. We find that there is a comprehensive picture for the isospin composition of SRC and their evolution with nucleon momentum. We also compute the non-relativistic kinetic energy of neutrons and protons and its evolution with nuclear mass A and N Z . Confirming the conclusions from alternate studies it is shown that the minority species (protons) become increasingly more short-range correlated as the neutron-to-proton ratio increases. We forge connections between measured nucleon-knockout quantities sensitive to SRC and single-nucleon momentum distributions. It is shown that the LCA can account for the observed trends in the data, like the fact that in neutron-rich nuclei the protons are responsible for an unexpectedly large fraction of the high-momentum components.

Short-range correlations (SRC) in asymmetric nuclei with an unusual neutronto-proton ratio can be studied with quasi-free two-nucleon knockout processes following the collision between accelerated ions and a proton target. We derive an approximate factorized cross section for those SRC-driven p(A, p N 1 N 2 ) reactions. Our reaction model hinges on the factorization properties of SRC-driven A(e, e N 1 N 2 ) reactions for which strong indications are found in theory-experiment comparisons. In order to put our model to the test we compare its predictions with results of 12 C(p, p pn) measurements conducted at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and find a fair agreement. The model can also reproduce characteristic features of SRC-driven two-nucleon knockout reactions, like back-to-back emission of the correlated nucleons. We study the asymmetry dependence of nuclear SRC by providing predictions for the ratio of proton-proton to proton-neutron knockout cross sections for the carbon isotopes 9−15 C thereby covering neutron excess values (N − Z)/Z between -0.5 and +0.5.