Probing Short Range Correlations in Nuclei with electro- and photo- production at Jefferson Lab

Short Range Correlations (SRCs) are a phenomenon found in all nuclei involving two nucleons at close proximity forming a pair with large relative momentum between them. Much of what has been learned about SRCs has come from electron-scattering experiments, particularly in anti-parallel kinematics. While theories that factorize the hard scattering reaction from the description of SRCs in the nucleus are consistent with this data, much stronger validation of our understanding of SRCs can come from measurements with different probes, reactions, and kinematics. With this goal in mind, an experiment was conducted in Hall D of Jefferson Lab in Newport News, VA in Fall 2021 using a real photon beam scattering from deuterium, helium, and carbon targets, to measure a range of photoproduction reactions from correlated nucleons. While analysis is still on-going, preliminary results show signatures of SRCs, including the emission of spectator nucleons with momentum balancing the observed missing momentum. In this talk, I will discuss preliminary results from the ρ⁰ channel and highlight my own work studying the relative abundances of SRC pairs across nuclei and the predominance of neutron-proton pairing.