Short-range correlations in asymmetric nuclei and the impact of nuclear structure

Short-range correlations (SRCs) in nuclei manifest as nucleon-nucleon pairs and are responsible for the high-momentum tail of the nuclear wave function. SRC pairs are predominantly proton-neutron pairs due to the influence of the tensor force. While the properties of these pairs appear to be universal, key questions remain which nucleons pair in the quantum many-body system and what role the nuclear structure plays. To explore these questions, a series of experiments have been performed to study SRCs under controlled conditions in symmetric and neutron-rich nuclei. This talk will discuss results from reactions using electron (e,e'p) and (e,e'pp) scattering at the Hall C and CLAS12 spectrometers at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, alongside novel (p,2p) inverse-kinematic scattering with hadronic probes at R³B at GSI-FAIR. For the first time we are able to infer information about the pair origin and quantum states by studying pairs in ^40,48Ca, ⁵⁴Fe, and ^12,16C isotopes, and learn about the interplay with the nuclear many-body system.