Study of Three-Nucleon Short Range Correlations in Inclusive Electron Scattering

Inclusive electron scattering is a powerful tool to study short range correlations (SRCs) in nuclei. Two nucleon SRCs (2N-SRCs) were first observed in data from SLAC and further studied at Jefferson Lab, appearing, between $1.4 < x< 2$, as plateaus in the per nucleon cross section ratio of heavy to light nuclei. The Jefferson Lab experiments also provided the first evidence of three nucleon SRCs (3N-SRCs) at $x>2$. However, because of limited statistics of the earlier experiments, the scaling behavior of 3N-SRCs is not well established. Jefferson Lab experiment E08014 ran in April and May of 2011 in Hall~A and aimed to study the onset of 3N-SRCs with better accuracy and, for the first time, to examine the isospin dependence of SRCs. The experiment will be briefly described followed by a discussion of the data analysis and the presentation of the preliminary results.